Dis-Illusion

The rug was pulled from under me. I couldn't breathe, couldn't think. It's not that I had never been dumped before, but this was different.

We had been seeing each other for 10 months, which I suppose is in that grey area between casual and serious—an anniversary looming and the significance that that attaches maybe accelerates feelings of wanting to get out or be stuck for a while.

It was always a bit on/off, tiffs and reconciliations, wary truces and weary, teary phone calls. But we kept at it, giving it our best shot. We were both bruised fruit—she was a bit fresher than me, but we had both lived and loved.

She had the remains of a collagen mishap on her lips—not grotesque, but noticeable, particularly if she wore lipstick, which she sometimes, inexplicably, did. I knew instinctively that this must never be mentioned, no matter how close we got. This should have been my first clue, but I was blind.

She was funny, clever, and sparkling. She did yoga everyday and managed to make a living doing substitute teaching while still pursuing her artistic dreams. I admired her strength and independence.

She never seemed to eat and consequently weighed 95 pounds. She was not conventionally attractive, but managed to make it work as a sort of sexy fairy.

I was besotted, by her spirit, her talent, and her supernatural energy. She also had very high standards of behavior, that I apparently failed to reach sometimes. This was the cause of most of our arguments.

We lived 10 minutes from each other and would see each other maybe three times a week—four if we were lucky. Sometimes just for a daytime hike, sometimes for a proper date, but mostly for cheap and charming evenings in.

There were hugs and hopes and kisses and plans. We always tried to be nice to each other, but were both quick to find fault if the other seemed to be not trying as hard.

She said she shouldn't really have friends who earned less than 50K a year (I earned less than 50K a year, so did she). I asked why and she said you should always surround yourself with people who inspire you and lift you up, which she had read in a book. All the other people in her circle did reach her financial threshold for friendship. It occurred to me that it was lucky that her gang hadn’t read the same book and put it into action, because then she wouldn't have any friends—except me. I didn't say this, as it would have led to an argument. She was very judgmental, of herself and others, but particularly of me. If I ever did something of which she didn’t really approve, but thought she couldn’t reasonably object to, she would resort to the passive-aggressive, “You do you.”

She was damaged, brittle, and beautiful.

I was very attentive. It was usually me who instigated text message chats, but she always responded pretty quickly. We always knew where the other was, what they were doing, and with whom. We compared our busy and ever-changing schedules enthusiastically to carve out times we could see each other.

We never went away together. There were plans to early on, but they fell through. So we had never done the travel thing or the hotel thing.

We had met at a weekly writers' group—very mutually supportive and generous, maybe a hundred floating members, but you'd usually get about 60 showing up each week. We had got chatting one night, and we were already FB friends through the group, so I instant messaged her after a couple of days—she was actually visiting New York at the time—and kind of asked her out, but leaving it vague enough so she could say no without me feeling rejected. But she was game, we just arranged to go for a drink before the next writers' group meeting.

It went well, we both had done this sort of thing before, so we easily moved through the early stages of modern courtship. Though I was always kept on my toes by her insistence on proper behaviour—not walking too fast, or too slow, always asking her questions about her day before daring to say anything about mine.

We saw shows and movies, went for walks, and loved and argued—always about perceived slights or claims of moral superiority, hers not mine. But I loved her. She cleverly made me feel I was not quite in her league. Any gift from her always had a subtle undercurrent of criticism.

And after 10 months she finished it with no warning, just said we were no longer romantically involved. I asked if there was anyone else and she said no. Then I learned, in the cruelest possible way, that she was seeing another member, and had been for a while.

I should have taken it better. I always knew it was not going to last forever. But the crassness of it floored me. Because I realized that she was not who she pretended to be. She was not someone with high standards of behavior who expected the same from her suitor, she was faking it. She was actually a stunted eighth grade mean girl who thought nothing of just blithely swapping me out for the first better offer. After successfully convincing me she was classiness personified, she was the last person on Earth I would have thought capable of such low behavior.

I fell apart. The person who I had loved didn't actually exist. It was all an act, designed to fool the gullible, and it did.

I didn't eat or sleep for two days, and still felt the dull ache in the pit of my stomach after a week. It hit me worse than the breakup of my first marriage (I told you I was bruised fruit). My world collapsed around me—not through the pain of the loss, but by the callous and complete betrayal of everything I thought we were.

I hope that if she is ever lucky enough to be loved again, she manages to be kinder.