Grief, Not Guilt by Jeanann Verlee

I wish you a tongue scalded by tea.
A hangover. Burnt toast. Stubbed toes. A lost job.
I wish you weeping in the shower. Salt in the sugar bowl.
A wishlist of sorrows. Grief, not guilt.
"Hole in your favorite coat. Stain on the good suit.
Arthritis for your joints. A broken guitar string at every show.
I wish each breath a little harder. Each workday
an hour longer. I wish your heart a thousand breaks.
All your sports teams, bottom rank. I wish your friends
go quiet. The leaves brown above your head.
A thunderstorm every morning. Nothing but pearls
when you shop for her diamond. I wish you bad knees,
a sore back. Empty sheets. A ghost to haunt your house.
A tub brimming with mud. Closet stuffed with too-small shoes.
Flat beer. Sour milk. Weak coffee. I wish you
flat tires, soggy pasta, a tax audit to fail.
Bent forks, dull knives. A hangnail for every finger.
I wish you a room wallpapered with my photographs.
A chamber filled with empty bassinets."

Pretty much, pretty much. 

The Search for Mr. Fabulous: What I Don't Get About Guys

And probably never will, but it just gets me.

I had a friend that has her own band boy. When she talks about it I just go UGH can't they both just become BFF, form a jerk club and run off into the sunset together? All the while vowing to never again try to date another girl because they're just going to do the same to her.

It won't happen, but one can dream.

So, the thing that gets me and I will never understand? Ok. Ready? Ready.

I will never understand the kind of guys that play a big game. I mean the type that say that they want a relationship with you, tell you that they love you and that they want to have a life with you, but then one day, usually very soon after they profess all that go, oh wait, never mind, he no longer has those feelings, but I still want to talk to you everyday and be your BFF because I do love you.

Wait. What?

I've had it happen to me twice. The first was Matt, my first real "adult" relationship after college. He literally called me up one day after our first strained part of our relationship and goes, "I thought I love you, but I don't. It stopped growing."

My response? "Well, then this is done." Followed by a long bloated silence. To which I finally say, "hello?"

"I can't believe you just said that to me," he responds.

Er. Didn't you just after a year of dating me  and talks of me moving and taking a new job and you wanting to live together CALL ME to tell me that you didn't love me? "What do you expect? I'm done with this game."

"Well can't we still be friends?! I want to talk to you! I have to talk to you!"

"No." Click.

And I hang up. And I mourn for a long time because he was the first person that really broke my heart and my trust in people. I didn't talk to him for three years and even then that "friendship" lasted a summer, if that because he couldn't take responsibility for what he had done. He admitted it was a screwed up thing, but never said it was him or his fault or that he shouldn't have played the love game if that wasn't what he felt. He had started all of that talk, not me and I felt like if you don't feel that way then don't say it because it builds up the other person, it helps build up their feelings and their hopes and its just cruel because eventually you're going to leave them, so why make them think that they are loved and that you won't?

Four years later, band boy enters my life and we share a lot. Like pretty much every dirty detail of, everything. I open up about this whole thing that happened with Matt. And he tells me how cruel that is and how it was done to him too.

And a year later? Turns around and does the same exact thing. In a text message. And then wants to be friends and BFF and text me all day long and call me as if everything that happened didn't and like it was all okay. Like he did nothing wrong.

Gets me because guys like that really think they did nothing wrong and in turn try to manipulate me into feeling bad because to them *I'M* the one making them the "bad guy," but the reality is they are the bad guy. They were selfish, careless and totally disregarded how their actions were going to make you feel. And just thought that it was all okay because in the end they didn't get hurt and could walk away without a thought in the world. That "we just dated and it didn't work." Really, dude?

I can be friends with people I have "just dated" and even ones I had relationships with that didn't work out. My high school sweetheart and I would have been together 10 years yesterday. We reminded each other of it like we always do, talked and wished each other well deciding that since I was spending it doing work for my masters and he was going to a music fest that it was pretty much on point of how it should be.

That's one thing I admire about my relationship with him. Neither one of us ever took our love away or demeaned the other's feelings or thoughts or the promises we made, but after years of trying, realized it just wasn't it for either of us and found a lifelong friendship instead.

Because when you truly do love someone, it doesn't go away, but sometimes it just evolves into something else all together. But to demean someone, their value or their feelings or to lie to them and play them and then act like its no biggie is just so...you know what? It's so Don Draper.

And really, who wants to be in love with friends with Don Draper?

I just didn't see the green light...

Ever since I was a child 

I've turned it over in my mind 

I sang by the piano 

Tore my yellow dress and 

Cried and cried and cried 

And I don't want to see what I've seen 

To undo what has been done 

Turn off all the lights 

Let the morning come, come 

Now there's green light in my eyes 

And my lover on my mind 

And I sing from the piano 

Tear my yellow dress and 

Cry and cry and cry 

Over the love of you 

On this champagne-drunken home 

Against the current of gold 

Everybody see I love him 

'Cause it's the feeling that you get 

When the afternoon is set 

On the bridge into the city 

I don't want to see what I've seen 

To undo what has been done 

Turn off all the lights 

Let the morning come 

There's green light in my eyes 

And my lover on my mind 

And I sing from the piano 

Tear my yellow dress and 

Cry and cry and cry 

'Cause your're a hard soul to save 

With an ocean in the way 

But I'll get around it 

'Cause your’re a hard soul to save 

With an ocean in the way 

But I'll get around it 

Now there's green light in my eyes 

And my lover on my mind 

And I sing from the piano 

Tear my yellow dress and 

Cry and cry and cry 

Over the love of you 

Cry and cry and cry 

Over the love of you 

(I can see the green light 

I can see it in your eyes) 

Cry and cry and cry 

Over the love of you 

I can see the green light 

I can see it in your eyes

The Search for Mr. Fabulous: A Generation of Women That "Wait"

Following my breakup which was really a year in the making, probably from the point that I had first met him, my girlfriends and family had all rallied around me. And I needed that. When I had been in that "relationship," I pretty much got alienated from my life and usually your boyfriend fills in those spots for the friends that don't want to stick around, don't like who you're with or who are just off doing their thing while you do yours, but mine never did. He stayed distant and separate all the time.

And my friends picked up on that and I tried to hide it because I didn't want my friends to not like him, but it's sort of a hard thing to hide when people ask you to do things at times that they expect you to you know, be with your boyfriend and you're only all too happy to accept. Or, you call them when you had plans with your boyfriend to then make plans with them because you got cancelled on again and well, sitting home stewing is just not time you want to waste.

I had become one of those women that waits - waits for it to get better, wait for them to get better, wait for them to realize...

During the first few months oh did I vent. I let it all out because I had been holding everything in for so long. I dwelled heavily on how he always treated me like an option not a priority and then when I got to the breakup part of my never ending band boy novel, I just unloaded about how nasty he became when I didn't want to do his "let's take a break, but still be BFF and it's all good."

No, thanks.

Then my friends I guess in a way to make me feel better over the saga that I had lived in, in the land of the gray band boy area for a year, would then tell me about someone they knew. Another friend or a friend of a friend or whatever.

"He sounds very immature, and seriously needs to grow up, but maybe that just means you're not meant to be together now, but one day when he's ready, you will be!"

Face. Palm. "Oh...you mean when he realizes?"

"No really, I have this friend and she dated this guy and he jerked her around for weeks, months, years, etc., but then one day he realized!"

"Oh so he made a commitment to her? They're planning to get married?"

"Well...no, but they're moving in together! And she's leaving her life, job, friends, etc. and she's just so happy."

Really? How is that any different? You're going to sell yourself out after however long he jerked you around to then have the pleasure of having his name on a lease with you? A lease. You are giving up everything...for a lease.

Since when did the lease become some big commitment? A lease is nothing. It's a piece of paper carrying bigger consequences for when he once again gets scared/decides it's not what he really wants/decides to play the jerk around game again. I don't get it. If you want a wife, make a commitment. This whole thing of my generation where it's you date for a period of time and then move in together before getting married is just stupid to me. You know if you want a life with someone and you figure that out pretty quickly, why do you need to play house as some "big step" towards an actual commitment? If you want to live with it, ya gotta put a ring on it.

And for what? Just to have your time waste when you could be out there single, enjoying your life your way and setting yourself up to meet the person that is not going to jerk you around or treat you any less than you deserve!

So ladies, you ready? STOP WAITING! Ditch that loser who does not realize the fabulousness that is you. And move on because the guy that will marry you, who will make a real, honest commitment to you is not the guy that strung you along for months, a year, years, etc. but will from the moment that meets you treat you with the respect and dignity that your feelings deserve.