I haul my weary body off the bench and propel it forward to the Barnes & Noble on State Street.
As I walk to the store, I promise myself that I’m not going to let the antics of Neil, Stacey, Kate, and Worldwide chase me out of my favorite city. It’s all going to be okay. I’m a rule follower, but maybe I’d just been working with some old, faulty rules that need an upgrade. Up to this point, I’d been doing okay. The rules of fitting in and putting my nose to the grindstone had gotten me pretty far in life, but was it possible that that’s as far as those rules were meant to take me? Perhaps it’s simply time for some new rules to turn this ship around. My initially heavy tread starts to feel lighter, and by the time I reach the store and open the door, I practically bounce inside.
Being that it’s the middle of the day, there are only a handful of people in the store and most are in the café. Confident that no one is paying attention to me, I head into the self-help aisle. Looking at the shelves in front of me, I’m not sure where to begin. The books seem to be organized by subject matter. There are titles on depression, grief, addiction … and while, yes, I’m depressed and grieving my old life, the idea of reading one of these books makes me even more depressed. I’ve heard the saying, don’t judge a book by its cover, but these covers—most of them blue—show people curled up into themselves, which is how I feel, but I don’t want to look at it on my bookshelf. A quick perusal of the relationship books shows them to also be a dismal bunch, dealing with serious issues such as co-dependency or abuse.
Finally, before all my hope and determination completely fade away, I spot a cheerful pink spine that reads When It’s Broke & Ain’t Worth Fixing. I pull it out, and on the cover is a photo of a sassy-looking woman wearing high heels, holding a wrench, and giving the reader a conspiratorial wink. According to the blurb on the back, it’s about moving on from a breakup and, most importantly, it promises to identify my past mistakes (aka picking the wrong men) so I don’t make them again. This is much more my speed.
I muster up my courage and carry it to the register. As the cashier scans the price, she says, “This one’s good. It stopped me from consuming my body weight in multiple pints of Ben & Jerry’s.”
“Glad to hear it,” I say, handing over my cash.
“Not so fast,” she says, grabbing a Moleskine journal from a display on the counter. “You’ll want this too.”
“Oh, no, thank you. I’m good.” It’s already taken too much of my courage to buy a self-help book; but, a journal too?
However, the dreaded commentary I had been so worried about just happened, and it’s oddly comforting. I’m no longer alone with my grief—I’m part of the sisterhood. I thank my new sister-friend and head home for some enlightenment.
Once home, I’m still nervous about my mother showing up unannounced. In an especially paranoid mood, I deadlock my front door and close my drapes. Feeling safe from intruders and prying eyes, I settle onto my sofa and start reading.
ONE POT OF tea and hours later, I set the book down on my lap. If I wasn’t a total broken-up-with-and-broken-down mess before, I’m feeling it now.
What an idiot I am! And why didn’t anyone tell me?
The questions from the book haunt me.
Did you schedule your life around him? Did he do the same for you?
Did you forget your friends and family for him?
Did you have to chase him because he didn’t chase you?
Did you trust him?
Did you want the same things?
Did you have to change to be with him?
Did he have a fatal flaw?
Was the relationship doomed from the beginning?
And my favorite—Why the hell were you even dating someone who was so completely incompatible with you in the first place?
This deceivingly cute little pink book just sucker punched me. Although I’m still recovering from the hangover of the century, I haul myself off the sofa and locate a bottle of white wine in my fridge.
Was it really all about Neil? When we first started dating, naturally I blew off my friends a little in order to spend time with him. That’s just how it is with new relationships—in the beginning one needs to make space in one’s busy life for someone new. But looking back, I’m not sure I ever recovered my old equilibrium. Something about life with Neil seemed so busy, and, in the five years we were together, I never made new friends and lost touch with a lot of my old ones.
But even when I was with other people, Neil was never far from my thoughts. Whenever I went out to dinner with my friends, I’d ask Neil if he wanted to join us, even though he usually declined. And then during dinner, I would check in with him and ask if he wanted me to order anything to bring home, even though as a grown man he was quite capable of finding his own dinner. Before I would even consider making weekend plans, I’d check with Neil first, even though I could have just accepted invites and informed him later that I was having drinks with the girls or whatnot. In fact, I was always checking in with him wanting to know where he was, what he was doing, what he was thinking, and maybe I should have pressed more—who he was with.
Even worse, during our relationship, I fear I lost something greater—myself. I think back to my twenties and how I spent my time, pre-Neil. At work, I was very involved in corporate community outreach programs, mostly of the sporting variety, such as organizing fun runs or softball games to raise money for local women’s shelters, youth centers, literacy programs, and legal aid clinics. But these pro-bono projects ultimately took up a lot of my nights and weekends, and eventually I stopped organizing them, claiming it was too time-consuming, and instead settled for being the odd volunteer or participant.
I also used to travel a lot with my girlfriends—visiting Iceland to see the northern lights and Peru to climb Machu Picchu. I look over to my bookshelf for the photographic evidence and see a younger version of myself grinning back at me with various foreign backdrops—a Moroccan souk, Big Ben, a beach in Cancun. Over the last five years, I hadn’t been on any big trips. And I wasn’t sure whether I was becoming less adventurous as I got older or because Neil didn’t enjoy traveling. I had wanted to do something exotic for our honeymoon, but instead I compromised with Neil’s request to go to Hawaii, where we’ve been before. His reasoning was that we’d be too tired after the wedding and that we should just relax rather than tromping around all over the globe. Since I figured we would have a lifetime of adventures ahead of us, I acquiesced to Hawaii.
But the biggest compromise I’d made—or maybe this was the fatal flaw—was that Neil wasn’t sure if he wanted children. I was sure. And after a year of dating, I brought up the issue. Though I’d been hoping I wouldn’t have to be the one to bring up The Talk, once I did, Neil assured me that we were on the path to marriage and that he just needed more time to consider the idea of kids. He wanted to have his career in a stable place and be financially ready to support a family. I could respect that. He promised me and my ticking clock that we would get married while there was still time. Now I’m thirty-five. Yes, there’s still time, but not to start over from the beginning.
Where was this book before we broke up? It should be required reading for every woman before they enter into a relationship, not when it has already gone south. I’ve been hating Neil these last couple weeks, but the person I hate now is me.