the upper hand

i have never been dumped. not super proud of that because all that means is that i have only coexisted with those i could take or leave. and leave and leave and leave. i would say that half the guys i have dumped behaved so badly that they literally forced me to do it. the other half, i just stopped wanting to get naked with. you all know who you are. only in the recent years have i broken my rule about revisiting old bullshit and have actually found myself back together with a few of those i so carelessly tossed aside.

getting back together with an ex is like waking a dead person you accidentally killed. they are going to act one of two ways. Either they will be so afraid of being hit again, they will literally cower in your presence, making you even more impatient and emotionally detached. the next and final break up will be even worse because you will be so full of scorn and disdain that you won't even be able to stomach a goodbye fuck. these types of scenarios usually leave me weary for days and its days before i get back in the saddle.  the other way they can act is out for revenge. You hurt them, they want to hurt you back, to  prove you can't just push them around and toss them away. Yup, this dead guy is a full fledged flesh eating zombie out to eat your brains. in typical horror movie style, you will run away screaming right into the arms of someone who looks just good enough by proxy to not scare the shit out of you. because you are rebounding, he will turn out to be even worse than the last guy. karma+rebound=bitch.

this is not what i meant by the upper hand. recently i broke up with a guy who, and he admitted this, did not treat me very well.he was so honest about this and the way that he felt, that i almost couldn't get through the break up speech. it was to most attentive he had been in over a month, and i started to remember why i liked him so much in the first place. and then he put the final nail in his own coffin. he told me we could work it out, as long as we did not have to talk about anything. no thanks. but thanks. and goodbye.

i left that night feel achy and lonely.  tears mixed with my contact lenses and my mascara, making my drive home a little more james bond than i would have liked, but i got home okay, at 5 in the morning, only to dilute the last of feelings on the subject with a glass of vodka.

in the three weeks since i had ended things, i had only texted him twice. both times inviting him to talk to me if he needed to. of course not. he didn't talk to me in life, why would he talk to me in the after life. he was destined to be someone else's beaten corpse, as i was not going to be the one holding the shovel this time. i was not even the one who broke him apart. that was his ex. i just accidentally ran over the pieces and blamed myself for all that carnage. okay, time to stop writing about relationships being like car accidents and men being undead.

this is what i thought it meant to have the upper hand. leaving while i still had my pride, my dignity. not drunk dialing him or stalking him at the bar where he works. not pumping his friends for information. just you know, getting on with things. he treated me badly, i walked away. nuff said.

until last night.

went to the bar where he worked. not to see him, though the thought made me want to throw up a little bit. i was not sure how he would react to seeing me, after not bothering to contact me at all. would he be cordial? would he be mean? would my drinks be short-poured? none of the above, it turns out. he completely ignored me. served a few of my friends and every swinging dick around me, but not me. i waited for about ten minutes. his coworkers naturally thought that he would be happy to serve me. wrong-o. finally got a drink from one of them and headed outside without having even made eye contact. the night progressed just like this. he was around, and around me, just not. present. even though i knew that he was aware of me, he seemed to be trying his damnedest not to care, which, the good girl that i am, made me care. i didn't want to make him feel bad, especially not at work, but come on, i didn't set out to torture the guy, just to hang out and have a good time with my friends at a bar i was frequenting long before i began screaming his unsingable name in bed. roles reversed, i would have bought the guy a fucking drink.

before we left, i made small talk, what about, i have no clue. i was just trying to clear the air. he seemed to want nothing to do with me. that was fine. i was not trying to flirt with him, just be friendly. i have had many a man tell me that I come off as patronizing and sociopathic when i pull this friend bullshit. many have wished that some day i will know the pain of rejection and heartache. probably not as long as i remain a sociopath, is how i usually reply.

alcohol makes me stupid.

5 more drinks later, and i was really getting irked that i couldn't get him to be my buddy. so i texted.

and called.

twice.

at 3 in the morning.

fuck.

his only response was that he had to eat. not sure what that was suppose to mean, but by the time I got the response it was this morning and my mortifying behavior came flooding back. whoops.

to make amends, i texted him with an apology and a promise never to do such asinine things again.

his texted reply?

just be loving and delicious.

that, my friends, is how he got the upper hand.