Introduction

Hi. My name's Mel, and I broke up with my boyfriend of 2.85 years this past Tuesday.

 

From my dorm's computer lab.

It's been wretched, and I want to write about it, in which "it" = the process of becoming unglued from almost three years of my life and most of my college experience. I want to write about pushing through this mass of depression and uncertainty. I want to write about being on my own. I want to write about why I did it, because frankly, right now I'm not even sure myself.

The actual relationship is still too raw for me to talk about today (personal barometer: I'm still sobbing when I hear Paul Westerberg's "Born for Me"). I hate reading about other people's nonfiction relationships, anyway, because when you're in one it sounds and feels completely unique, but it's not. There's nothing wrong with that; it just bores people who are outside the chosen circle.

I'm writing a day-by-day survivor log. Follow along to make sure I don't drown myself in unsolicited advice, schoolwork, or diet soda/alcoholic hybrids.

Day 1: Tuesday
THE Tuesday. It hurt a fuckton. I didn't have classes because it's Election Day. After getting back to my dorm from my boyfriend's place with a glaze of snot and sweat and sleep slicked over my face and hair, I sit in the computer lab, change my Facebook status, click on my email's refresh button like a rat on a random ratio lever (thanks, Psych 101, for teaching me a more depressingly useful metaphor). When I manage to go across the street to the Student Union for lunch, a lunch lady who always recognizes me and says hi asks me about my man. That's what she says. "How's your man?" I hoist a smile that crumples rapidly as I pay and go cry into the chicken wrap I didn't really want.
I go upstairs to do my fundraiser week show on the college radio station. I get to play blues for two hours straight. I only hear about half of it.
I call my parents. Nervous as hell. I break down as soon as my mom answers. She thinks she has to say all this elaborate stuff to make me feel better but I just want to hear her say she's sorry for me. She does; I ignore most of the other stuff, especially about how this might not be permanent. Yeah, Mom. Maybe we will, I say automatically, fretting string in the hole in my jeans.
Get back to my dorm, keep refreshing BF's Facebook page to see if he's changed his status yet. Field a text from my friend Mike, an email from my distance writing friend Jenna, a couple sad faces on my Facebook relationship status. Refresh. Refresh. Nothing. My eyeballs hurt.
At 9pm, I call BF, choke into his voicemail that I miss him, then call two more times over the next 20 minutes. Feel vaguely proud of myself for being able to stop after that.

Day 2: The First Full Day
Excerpt from email I wrote to Jenna yesterday (Wednesday, November 3)

Today's been just weird. I woke up feeling actually happy. Good sleep + comfy bed + Jane Eyre. Then in the shower I started feeling absolutely wretched, and after morning sociology I cried a little in the women's room. A lady in the stall next to me asked what was wrong and I told her and she gave me advice. While we were still in our seperate stalls. She told me it may seem like the end of the world, but it's not, and "everything except homicide and suicide you can get over." Profundity in unexpected places.
Then when I went to the student union to get lunch, I ran into a guy I know from robotics (the annoying, crazy, loudly competent computer programmer). He acted all paternal (dude's 18...no, 19. Sophomore.) and gave me a hug (I ended up with my head sort of jammed into his armpit and all it smelled like was fabric).
And I need to ask BF the administrative password to one of the dorm lab computers so I can install a slidshow program to get a reporting project done for tomorrow. My laptop crapped out on me over the summer. I also have to give him back his Nikon D60.
I think I'm going to email my professor about an extension so I can beg someone else's laptop sometime before Tuesday.
Tomorrow I'm having dinner with my friend Mike, the guy I've wanted to jump for about 14 months now and have not. I won't tomorrow, at least not for real, but I miss touching already. Not even sex; sex was sort of tangibly related but too often made me worry if I/we was/were doing it right. I just miss being able to lean on someone, or touch an arm with mine, or put my head on a chest or shoulder in a careless familiar way. We watched a video in Psych 101 about baby monkeys clinging to a synthetic furry mom model, and that choked me up because it reminded me of BF's chest hair.

Damn you, Psych 101.
More parental calls--one of each. Bewildered but supportive. Me and my dad are getting so much better at talking to each other.
More Internet browsing and crying until I look like I've been smoking weed all day. I haven't, and never will. Hyperlinks are my drug of choice.

Day 3: Today and So Far
Invited insomnia to snuggle with me about 2am, because it was just standing there staring at me and I figured I might as well make a friend of it.
"Remember, God loves you," in an email from my dad. I'm an atheist. He is not. I appreciate his thought but smell a lecture coming on (it smells like laminated pine).
Went to a pre-scheduled biofeedback appointment at the student mental health center. Learned what I'm calling The Extreminties Boogie to increase circulation and how to breathe from the diaphragm so my heart doesn't feel so much like a jackrabbit's.

That Big Dark Shaggy Beast Called the Future:
I'm meeting Mike for dinner at 7pm. Reckless decisions may or may not be made.


Reading: Jane Eyre by Charolette Bronte
Listening to: Nothing while I'm writing, but I was listening to the AV Club podcast, and I want to listen to the Black Keys.