Breaking Up is Hard to Watch

Today Loud asked me, “Why am I doing this?”

This question crystallizes a concern that I’ve had for a while, a theory that he really is as dumb as a box of, well, dumbness. I answered as plainly as I could, “Because you’re afraid”.

“Afraid of what?” he asked, innocently enough, probably expecting me to say ‘Feelings’ or ‘Clowns’ or something equally simple and easy to deal with.

“Getting old. Commitment. Being left. Getting fat. Making sacrifices. Responsibility. Honesty. Growing hair in weird places. Disappointing people. Not being adored. Loving just one person.”

He really wasn’t expecting that, judging by the stunned look on his face. And that was off the top of my head! I think I did well, although if I’d had time to think I probably would have added, ‘Letting go of old fears’ or ‘Stagnation’ or something equally deep and meaningful. He went on to complain about how very unsure he was about the whole thing, and how it was ‘pushing the envelope of his arrogance’ (*sigh*, translation=he is doubting himself for once). I advised him to be at least 51% sure, since what he’d done was pretty bad but he was fast approaching the point of really-super-difficult-to-forgive, and that if he had doubts about his crappy choices he better take a long hard look, real soon.

I think my favorite part was when he said, ‘How could he not have known?’, and I said, “Because he trusted you utterly and completely. He had no reason to think otherwise until you broke his heart”. Yeah, that was fun to say. All in all it’s been an exciting day. He wanted to have a conversation about getting the house on the market while I was making a sandwich in the 14 minutes I had between conference calls today. I told him to slow down. It’s irritating that I’m so much like him, that once a decision has been made it’s just one huge fast crushing snowball for us, as if it’s going to hurt less to get everything over with sooner. He scoffed at the idea of me and Quiet getting another housemate, which just pissed me off, so I told him to have a good time living in his broke-down car with no furniture and no one to love him (yes, I said 'broke-down', I'm so filled with anger that I've lost all grammatical skills).

It might seem like an unfair reaction, but I’ve been dumped too, kind of, and I want my little scrap of pain recognized by him and added to his list of guilt, damnit. Plus he’s hurt someone I love very much, very deeply, and I’m a grudge-holder, so he'd better watch out.