Photo by Peggy Sue Zinn on Unsplash
February 25, 2024
There are such little, tiny, tiny, miniscule things that scream you’re not right for one another.
When things “transitioned to friendship” with David, translation, when I broke up with him because I found out he was lying about loving me, I was pretty laid out flat. It wasn’t him so much, although I did believe I loved him. It was the death of something I really thought might work. Grieving. The pain of it. The tears. The disappointment. But mostly, the betrayal of him having strung me along for months. And months. But, as usual, I can’t blame him. I was right there, begging to be strung along. I do that. I'm always hopeful. (But you know? I kind of like that about me. That's a good trait. I'll keep it.)
I made him vegetarian vegetable soup probably a year ago now. Ya, maybe March 2023, when things were good. (In retrospect, were they ever good?) After we broke up last May, probably in June when we were still talking, and he was absolutely obsessed with returning my things, he told me that soup was still in the freezer and he needed to return the plastic container. I will bet you ANYTHING he still has that soup in his freezer.
He still has a number of my things, which he mentions every time we talk. He wants to get my wipes back to me. Wipes! And half a bag of cat litter. He won’t use it because it’s not the brand he uses. (As long as you scoop, I don’t think cat's care. They are not brand conscious.)
Every time we talk, he mentions these things. They weigh on him. Heavily. At this point, after all this time, it gives me a wry sly pleasure to think about how much it bothers him to have my things in his apartment. Still.
There is nothing he has of mine I give two shits about. I would like my top sheet back, the one with the pink flowers. Naturally. Because it has pink flowers. The top sheet I took to his house because it was impossible for us to share a top sheet. I’d end up with the entire sheet and he’d be lying there naked, in deep sleep, oblivious. I felt so bad about that. I finally brought my own sheet. And then the bed was amassed in top sheets, mustard yellow on his side, big loud pink roses on the other. Big. Loud. Pink. Just like me.
I destroyed the things he’d given me when we broke up. I mean I smashed the portrait he'd drawn of me he’d had framed. It was of me, so that part was nice, but it was a horrible likeness. It was so bad, when the young woman who stayed with mom slept in my bedroom, she took the portrait off the wall so she didn't have to see it. It was the stuff of nightmares.
I took that portrait and smashed it against the edge of the garbage can until the glass was in tiny pieces. Then I was totally annoyed with myself because I had to sweep up the glass. And I laughed, then, because how ludicrous was that?
And the pink hat he got me with the Tubes logo, my favorite band. The hat was grotesque. It was a huge baseball hat, way too big for me. It sat up high on my head and I could never adjust it to fit me. I wear hats all the time. He should have had some sense of my style. I wear hats all the time. That’s why he bought me one. I’m thinking it was likely the least expensive one. David is very frugal. Not stingy, but frugal. I wore it once. The day he gave it to me. It was in the Goodwill bag for a long time. And then one day after we broke up and were still talking, when he’d pissed me off, which he does now routinely, because I no longer pretend he doesn’t, I got it out of the Goodwill bag and put it in the trash.
How easy would it be for David to take the soup out of the freezer, let it thaw in the sink, wash the container (worth about $2), and put it back in the cupboard to use? Would he really think he was depriving me if he did that? Well. Yes. He would. How easy would it be for David to box up my things, just that sheet really – and I’ve told him I only care about the sheet – and simply return them. He knows exactly where I live, he passes my building all the time. I gave him the manager’s name and phone number one of those times he was going on and on about returning my things when I didn’t want to see him because it still hurt too much.
I told him I didn’t care about any of the other things, he could use them or throw them away. I've told him that several time, now, every time we talk actually. But in his mind, he must get it all back to me. All of it. Because that’s how he purges a relationship. He doesn’t destroy things, he returns things. That’s how different we are.
There are such little, tiny, tiny, miniscule things that scream you’re not right for one another.