40 Days of Mourning

Weary se'nnights nine times nine...

It was an uneven playing field from the get-go: she was the Wife, I was a person of no consequence. But she took me on, she slew me and crushed me underfoot, and even this was not enough for her, vicious and vengeful she-demon that she was, she sought to tear the entrails from my bloodied carcass and stuff them down my throat. Far be it from me, though, to seek revenge - I'm a lover, not a fighter! I shall instead crawl off to lick my wounds, by attempting to console myself with whatever glimpses of silver I can spot in this black cloud. Here they are.

1) Men are nothing but a bunch of motherfucking assholes, I'm better off without them, etc.

2) I lost 2 kilos when he left me. And I had already lost 2 kilos when my mother got cancer.

3) I can finally devote myself even more slavishly to the PoDS. If I don't end up abandoning him at the steps of some nunnery somewhere (if such a thing even exists, today).

4) I no longer have to worry about Magic walking in on us some day. That would have been embarrassing. And almost a little bit funny. But mostly just terrible.

5) I can perhaps finally do something productive with my life. Not that he took up that much of my time - at least not physically. But I was always either dreaming about him or floating around in a state of good-for-nothing euphoria.

6) I was never good enough for him. And I was deteriorating.

7) I was always destined to be alone.  It really did seem unnatural to me, to be so happy.

8) I was always insanely jealous - though I think I did a damn good job of pretending not to be!

9) I was also being driven mad with suspicion. It's a well-known fact that a woman commits adultery when she finds herself in an unhappy relationship, whereas a man is predisposed to it by personality traits inherent in his nature. The old "once a cheater" maxim, tiring as it is. Of course he couldn't really "cheat" on me in the conventional sense, since he was free to do whatever he liked. But I knew that didn't entitle me to his honesty - he told me so himself at that restaurant on rue Orillon. So I knew he was probably always hiding things from me, and yet it's not in my nature to police people and spy on them. I'm a very trusting person... and also, believe it or not, a very private person, which is why I respect the privacy of others. So I would never have been able to pull off the kind of massive undercover surveillance operation apparently necessary to keep a guy like this in check! So hats off to the blood-thirsty harpie, after all.

10) He was probably tiring of me towards the end anyway. At least now I can tell myself that it was only because he got caught that he left me. Were it not for that, he would surely have deserted me much more ignominiously. Whereas now, I can always believe that it is as star-crossed lovers that we parted!

Don't get me wrong - if I'd had my way, it would never have ended.  And I do have regrets.  But that's the subject of another post (unfortunately yes, there is more where that mindless babble came from).

World Without End

Seven days of unmitigated (or very slightly mitigated) hell. My life stretches before me like a barren wasteland.

Sound and Fury

So, it's been almost a month since THAT fateful message, and now I get a message from Magic: "We need to talk. In private." Of course I'm thinking: they changed their minds and got to him after all! 

My mouth felt all of a sudden dry and parched, as if I were walking through the Empty Quarter, rather than the streets of London (with high heels and a 20 lb baby). And despite the abject terror gnawing at my stomach, I couldn't help but be impressed at the relative calm with which he had apparently taken this news.

And then, of course, it turned out to be something COMPLETELY UNRELATED!!!!

So I couldn't even distract myself with thoughts of vengeance - not that I had been able to, up to this point, for I knew I would never go through with it, not because of any misplaced sense of loyalty or the kindness of my heart, but because... well, why bother, really? I mean, WTF do I care?

In fact the one good thing that has come of all this is that now I don't feel like I've been unfairly let off the hook, so to speak. I mean, I think I was suffering from some sort of survivor's guilt syndrome, almost. But after this I honestly don't think I can take any more drama!

And the worst part of it is that all those things one does for another person over the years - lugging groceries across town and standing over the stove for hours and hours - it all amounts to nothing, a hundred thousand brownie points cancelled out by one semi-nude picture taken for a stranger on the internet.

18 Days Later

I am pretty much okay now, during the day - just a little irritable. But at night (which is strange because I hardly ever saw him at night), I feel it like a physical pain. If only things could have been different... a foolish sentiment, and one which I shouldn't allow myself.

I was never jealous of her - what a lie, I was insanely jealous. But I never minded her having him all the time, until it meant that I couldn't have him at all.

L'amour que nous ne ferons jamais ensemble

How annoying... I now have access to a secret love nest which no-one knows about... and yet no use for it at all.

Maybe he was right about me - I really am incorrigible. I never knew whether to find it insulting or flattering. Generally I just found it rather cheeky, coming from him.

Sometimes I wonder if what I did was a really, really bad thing. Or was it just nothing at all?

Nothing at all, right?

Epilogue

All it took was just a smidgen of hope that I might not be completely forgotten, and I don't feel quite so devastated. Just a little - how would he say it? - "hard done by".  Hard.  Hehe.  Now, even if we never meet again, at least I can comfort myself with the hapless idea that it is as star-crossed lovers that we parted.

I probably ought to be more concerned that a savage and ruthless harpie has apparently come into possession of incontrovertible evidence of my wrongdoing, but somehow I just can't get myself too worked up about it. 

At any rate, I have warned Magic that a blood-thirsty lunatic may be hot on my trail - which strangely did not surprise him at all.  Then yesterday he mentioned to me that he might be depressed, so I helpfully suggested that he have an affair, but he just gave me a hurt and bemused look.  I also asked him if he would like to join a sex club with me, but he said we would be the hottest people there, we'd just be "trading down".  No arguing with that.

And I had a nice talk with the Clone, in which he said a few comforting things, one being that he likes my blog better than "the blog of that girl whose naked pictures you sent me" (I didn't even know she had a blog! must hunt it down, and maybe rekindle my friendship with its author), and another being that he would like to see me again in the flesh, even if it's just for a coffee!  How sweet.  Now there's a person who has been there for me during the three worst experiences of my life (all neatly packed into a 6.5 month period).  What a pity that for once, he didn't ask me what I was wearing...

Breaking Up is Hard to Do - The First 10 Days

Day 0: An uneventful day for me. My Blackberry is turned off to conserve battery.

Day 1: I receive his message at a farmer's market. I read it twice before I can believe it. An odd sense of relief (I had been dreading this moment for so long), and yet a feeling of disconnect from reality. Am I in shock?

Day 2: Blind panic. Will he make good on his threats? I run up a €200 phone bill asking friends, family and online admirers for advice. My friends foolishly suggest asking him for help! Just goes to show how willing we girls are to believe in love, and loyalty, and the basic goodness of people.

Day 3: I have always been good at games, no matter how much I hate them. He falls for my bluff and folds his hand. It is a Pyrrhic victory.  I have already begun to re-read our chat logs. Though now he is an enemy, I miss him as a friend.

Day 4: I console myself with the absurd fantasy that one day, not now but maybe twenty years from now, he might return to me. Or have forgotten me sufficiently to seduce me all over again.

Day 5: I awaken from dreams of having him as a friend. But I have realised the foolishness of hoping. He was out of my league from the beginning. I should be grateful for two years of overwhelming joy. It was more than any human being deserves. I abandon the 20 Year Plan.

Day 6: I am over the worst of it, I think. It's the oldest story in the book. I loved him, he didn't love me. But I never asked or expected his love. All I wanted was for him to be happy, fucking lots of girls, and to remember me fondly. I think the first is well underway. And that does make me happy - jealous but happy. The second, for some reason, has been denied me, though I think I did everything within my power to merit it. But oh, well. Some you win... and Dim Sum, you lose.

Oh, wait. There was one other thing. I did ask him to always keep me in mind as a potential threesome partner if ever one of his future girlfriends is interested and they can't find anyone else. Here's how I imagine that conversation might go...

Him: sometimes I think I would like to fuck you with another girl

(Of course this would most likely all be in French but I can't be bothered to translate and also would find it harder to project as he never spoke to me in French, though I did ask him to... his French was so cute. And sexy. Anyway, back to the conversation.)

Him: sometimes I think I would like to fuck you with another girl

Her: oh really like who

Him: ...one of your friends

Her: haha i dont think so :S

Him: >:)

Her: dont you know anyone

Him: well there was someone but it's too risky... wife knows everything about her

Or maybe... "well there was someone but she fell in love with me so I had to get rid of her B-)".

But really he'd probably just say "no".

God I was crazy about that guy. It's probably a good thing he broke up with me because I would never have been able to end it with him. It's just the way he did it that was so bizarre. First of all, he broke up with me by text message. Yes, really. And right after I'd found out that my mother has cancer. It's almost a cliche of boorishness, is it not? Secondly, it was all "I never want to see you again" and "never contact me again". Like some peevish schoolgirl. When a simple "hey babe, let's call it quits" would have sufficed! And then, if all that weren't bad enough, there were the threats to hunt me down and ruin my life. That was a bit gratuitous, really. When all I ever did was every fucking thing he ever asked me to!

But there it is. He was a fun-loving guy. I was born to cry. :)

Day 7: The anniversary of the day I first felt his cock enter my pussy. Though I am resigned to it being over - I have only to look in the mirror to wonder what he ever saw in me at all - I wish I could have known this was coming, could have seen him one last time. Not now, of course, now that he hates me, but if I could travel back into the past, and see him look at me once more with love!

Day 8: Perhaps I shall just have another baby, and name it after him.

Day 9: I return home to find that if there is a weight loss method more effective than having a mother with cancer, it's having a mother with cancer and being abandoned and betrayed by a vindictive and vengeful ex-lover. But other than that, I am fine. If I had one wish it would be to remember everything. Speak, Mnemosyne!

Day 10: I knew this would be a sad day for me - the first day back home that I could have seen him, if he'd wanted to. And to think that I'd probably have been grumpy about having to get up early, or feeling guilty about neglecting the baby. And now I shall never see him again! I guess that's the strangest thing - though I've been broken-hearted in the past, it was never like this, this total cut-off. I know I should just be grateful for all the good times we had together, which could easily never have happened. He did so many nice things with, for and to me. Reason dictates I shall surely get over him some day. But when? They say it takes 100 days to break a bad habit. But surely it ought to be a function of how long one had the habit to begin with. Maybe 10%? 75 days? I decide to watch the wedding flash, over breakfast...