Happy Birthday

Wow, this is going to be a tough one to write.

I’m actually feeling a little queasy as I start to write this, come to think of it.

Admittedly, I’m not entirely sure how to start…

OK, here we go…

Remember a few weeks ago I wrote a column discussing how I’ve had some, shall we say, “interesting” experiences with dating and girlfriends? Well, here’s a specific story on that front… triggered by the fact that my ex-girlfriend’s birthday was last week.

We’ve been broken up for a couple of months now, and I’ve been dating and I’m sure she has, as well — not that I know this for a fact or anything, but it’s a relatively safe assumption.

Still, I can’t help that I’m aware of it and my brain acknowledges it.

It’s how my mind is wired, for better or worse. I can’t help it.

We ended quite terribly. Everything appeared to be fine. We were on the phone finalizing our plans for the upcoming weekend together, which included our Valentine’s Day plans, before she went into the shower.

Yes, we broke up just a few days before Valentine’s Day. I had to return the gifts I’d already gotten for her. Sucks, huh?

Then she got into the shower, came back out, and was an entirely different person. She called me back, crying hysterically. What the hell happened in that now infamous — in my mind anyway — shower?

I could finally decipher her saying that something was bothering her about me and/or us. I’m not sure which, but that much I was finally able to understand from her.

But she wouldn’t tell me WHAT it was. And to this very day, I still don’t know. I tried for the next 24 hours to get her to tell me, but she refused. She said it was “too hard” to tell me, and she “couldn’t tell me.” I messaged her, I called her, I even went into New York City to her apartment to try to talk with her, but she refused to talk at each and every turn.

She went so far as to tell her doorman not to allow me to come upstairs. And this happened, literally, just a few days after I met her parents for the first time (she told me her parents said they “loved me”) and she had me start to leave some of my things at her apartment.

So, I had no choice and took the step to, well, you get the idea…

And with her birthday now having rolled around, it’s roused emotions in me and got me thinking again.

Something is missing here. I mean, obviously there’s something missing, something going on that I clearly don’t know about. But what? In the midst of those 24 hours of insanity, in the week or two afterward, and again now, I’ve racked my brain trying to figure out what happened, how she became a totally different person, and why she refused to tell me what was bothering her.

Did I do something wrong? I’d like to think that I was a pretty good boyfriend. I mean, no one is perfect, but all things considered, I’d like to think so.

I made the trip to her apartment to help her write the remaining 50 evaluations for her students (she’s a Spanish and Special Education teacher at a private school in Manhattan). They were due the next day and she was kind of freaking out about completing them.

I’d make the trip into Manhattan to be with her whenever she’d had a bad day and was in a funk as a result.

We talked and saw each other a good amount. She said she liked a relationship with someone who’d talk that way. Admittedly, I do too, so it wasn’t really a big departure for me.

So what the hell happened? Clearly there’s a piece of this puzzle missing. But aside from that mysterious piece, another question remains: why not tell me what was bothering her?

Yes, she said that it was “too hard” to tell me, and she “couldn’t tell me,” but those seem more like excuses than real reasons. I mean, I could be wrong, that’s my thought anyway. My inkling, though, is that I’m right, since I still don’t know what happened to this very day, and we’ve not spoken a single word since. Besides, is that any way to treat someone you say you love? And, arguably, the saddest part is, whatever was bothering her could have been perfectly valid for all I know, but since she refused to tell me, I have no idea if that’s the case or not.

Now, she’s definitely an emotional person. Frankly, I liked that, but at times she did take it to something of an extreme. On a previous occasion, she shut down and it took me an hour to get her to tell me what was bothering her, but she finally did. Obviously, she has a habit of putting up walls. This time, it was a wall I couldn’t scale.

A number of years ago I came to realize that, in the aftermath of a breakup, people often make the distinction between missing their ex and being with HIM/HER, or simply missing being in a relationship with SOMEONE. And thinking about my ex and “us” since we broke up, part of me does miss being in a relationship, but I’ve come to realize that — even through all of that nonsense and ridiculousness — part of me does miss her, as a person.

And with her birthday staring me in the face on the calendar, I find all of these emotions resurfacing and, frankly, bothering me. Bothering me, not just because of what I just mentioned, but also because I don’t really know what the hell happened for her to completely change and act that way, and, likely, I never will. And that leads to the obvious realization that I don’t have closure. It’s a hard pill for me to swallow.

It may take longer than it would have, had I gotten an explanation, but eventually — though the memories will remain — the difficult emotions will fade and I’ll continue to move on. And, sooner or later, I’ll stop wondering…

If you read my column about relationships a few weeks ago, you might have wondered if I was exaggerating. Now you see what I was referring to was real. But I’ll keep trying to stay positive and putting myself out there, since — after all — my mother STILL wants grandchildren.

“The hottest love has the coldest end.” – Socrates

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