By Beauty Damned

Bye Bye Baby

I guess there's no harm in announcing to the world that I am going through the worst breakup of my life. No - stop - don't worry about me. I hate that, that worried tone people get, as if I might not be alright, because I am alright. It's going to be okay. But it truly is the most prolonged ending to my most prolonged relationship, and it is hard. Did you ever see that movie, "The Breakup" with Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn? Well trust me when I say that it is a lot like that (without the argument over property), nor will Rob and I be running towards each other in a final upturn to a happy ending. And maybe we will be able to laugh about some of it, but still, it is sad, I know it is so sad, and it hurts, hurts like total madness, but it's inevitable and it must be and we can't turn around now and there is nothing but the end of everything we started and worked so hard at for nearly seven whole years. In a way, I never thought we would get to this point and in another, it seems like we always knew we couldn't go on forever the way we have been (bad fighting over an endless array of issues). Of course, we had so much more than fighting, we still do. We had everything that came between the fights, that patchwork of moments that you weave with a person, a fabric which becomes so voluminous with action and interlocution, experiences that we've shared, places we've been, conversations we've had, the joys and privileges of knowing and loving one another... But we wove it together and then we both threw it down on the floor and used it as a rug to walk across, wearing it threadbare during arguments.

We are still living together, but his permanent departure is imminent, and though we manage to get along normally most of the time, we have plenty of lapses into anger and frustration over the whole mess as well. He will be moving to a place nearby, so we'll likely still see each other occasionally - or maybe not - who knows. Right now we are trying to be friends. And that's all we are. It's so weird because that's how we started, but it's not how I wanted us to end up. We met on the corner of Sixth Avenue and 55th Street, where the big red LOVE sculpture is in front of the Men's Apparel Building, which is where Rob and I both worked. I was a secretary at Kane Kessler on the 26th floor and he was an assistant in television sales at MGM on the 25th floor. We met over a shared nicotine addiction and a common interest in music and good times. He would join me and my friends for lunch, but I was with someone then and even though that guy was a jerk I didn't have my eye out for a replacement. Rob was just a sweet guy. But then he became more. And then I left my idiotic boyfriend at the time - well, I'll just be honest and say that Rob saved me from that crazy ex, really he did. And then he became a lot more, before he became everything, the love of my life, the one I wanted to be with forever. We both had those notions. Who doesn't? And it seemed possible, likely even. By the time we realized that our fights had the capacity to become legendary and terribly destructive, it was already much too late. We wanted to make it work badly enough to keep trying and to try for several years. And as happy as we have been at times - and we have been so happy too - certain problems have never gone away and certain ones have worsened a great deal.

So this is where we find ourselves. At the intersection of Heartbreak and Disappointment.

But it's not all doom and gloom. Of course it isn't. Nothing is. I've got a very exciting summer ahead of me with new jobs and school and reading and laying by the pool and being single. You can't tell me that sounds half bad. Even if I may or may not cry myself to sleep one or two more nights before I get there...