Not Girlfriend Time

Welp. Apparently, it's over. He wants to be "friends." I'm not going to prattle on about it. Not too much.

I think I might be okay. I feel a little bit of sadness creeping in today, but it has nothing to do with missing him, or feeling lost or any other thing related directly to us breaking up. It's mostly that I'm broke and my social circle here is currently very limited. I don't have a lot of outlet. I am and will make friends, I will find my place, but it's 6:36 on a Friday night, and I know I'm staying home. I know no one will be calling me to see if I want to go to a thing. I know no one will say, "Hey Sarah, I need to talk. Can I buy you a drink?"

I have plans tomorrow night. With my two new friends, Mia and Sharon. They are insta-likes. My people. My age. I think Sharon's a little older. Sarcasm, dark humor, graphic sexual conversations, warmth. My people. We're going to see a band I saw on Tuesday that's fantastic. Right now, I don't have enough money to pay the door fee. Wait. Maybe I do. I've got $4-something in my bank account and a few coins on my mantle. Together, I may be able to pull together $5. This is where my life's at. That means a 2-mile bike ride to the bank before noon so I can pull out that money.

Thpppt.

For Joey, this has all been intense. For me, it's been the first time I've done a relationship closer to the way I see others doing it. Smartly. I picked my battles more wisely. I kept many things to myself that annoyed or frustrated me that were not important. I "fought" when I had to with as much grace as I could. And I fell slowly in love with him, and deeper as time went on, instead of feeling everything all at once and needing to fulfill myself with intensity within the relationship. I learned to allow myself to be inside the relationship without over thinking it. But, it is a testament to my sometimes faulty ability to read people and a situation that somewhere in the last few weeks, he decided to break up with me, while I was falling deeper in love and thinking of him less and less as a temporary object, or something to be regarded tentatively. And maybe he sensed this, because it happened shortly after I began to fall deeper, that I could sense certain problems forming. A couple days before we broke up, we went out to dinner. I mentioned my ideal way of dying, at 85, in bed with my partner of 50-ish years, of carbon monoxide poisoning. It was all well and good until I laughed and said that he'd be 77, which seems a little young to die. I felt him get just the slightest bit colder. I think he was already near his decision at that point, at least subconsciously. Somewhere in the last month especially he started to make the pile of my faults that would tip the scales in favor of the decision he already made. I learned a long time ago not to do that. It's just a shitty, shitty thing to do to love. Instead, I let those things make a pile and make sure I keep very clear that there's another pile, too. One of love, past good deeds, the way the sun bounces off his eyelashes. And those things always bring me back to the right place. And eventually, things get better.

I won't be writing any songs about this one. I won't be waxing rhapsodic about it being the best relationship I ever had with the best sex and the best connection in all ways. That isn't what this was. This was a kind love. This was patient and warm and safe and I loved it very, very much. It didn't have peaks and valleys of emotion, it stayed steady. I got mad and frustrated and upset with him, but it was never that mad, that upset, that frustrated. For the most part, it was just good.

He disagrees.

Well, okay then.

I need time to not be Girlfriend. I told him this. My offer was we take this month off. I'll be out of town for two weeks for Thanksgiving anyway. I can get my head together about this place I live in, get some money made, etc. I'd leaned too hard on him for emotional and financial support in the tumult that's been my first two months here.

And you know what? Things feel better without him. That isn't to say I don't still want to be with him. That isn't to say I want this love to diffuse itself so it can coalesce some other day for another. I just need a fucking break.