The Break Up

Christy is always telling me that applying for jobs is just like hanging out with a new boyfriend. To which I of course reply with vehement disagreement.

"No, its not," I sigh impatiently, "and we've been through this. You can call the job you want as many times as you want and its not needy; its determined." And I always believed this was true. Until today at 4:16, when I was dumped.

By a preschool.

And suddenly I'm back in college, freshman year, huddled on the floor of my dorm with my roommate, eating microwave Easy-Mac at twelve in the morning, hysterical laughter spilling over the throb that sits right behind my soft pallet, tickling my throat, the corners of my mouth, tempting me to give into the tears and the grief and the loss. Why, why, why

As it was then, its not the actual lost thing that represents the first prickly wave of grief. It is instead an overwhelming sense that one's life is now somehow less organized and meaningful. I am familiar with this notion, and I've always resented it because I don't believe it is true; I am convinced that life is powerful and wonderful and necessary with or without a mate. Yes, everyone needs The Other, deeply, complexly, compellingly. But the other, the lover? Optional.

But this evening as I sit sifting through my thoughts about the job, I realize that its not the particular lover that is at the heart of the loss; it is the trajectory this one represents, or has represented- the sense that one has momentum. And with the loss of this direction, the infinite alternatives sprawling ahead are too paralyzing and lonely to compel the adventurer you once were. The first pain, I realize tonight, is the loss of your own identity and motion. And as a result, the particular specifics of one's loss isn't really immediately felt. That, unfortunately, comes much later. Because of this, sometimes it is less painful than it initially seems to be. Sometimes it is worse.

I imagine in this case it will be much easier than it feels now. To be honest, I knew about the preschool for less than 48 hours, only waited thirty hours in between the interview and the actual break-up. But they were a beautiful thirty hours, filled with plans: how can you not? Budget configurations, many phone conversations with my enthusiastic mom, a new schedule drawn up, a decision to buy a bike, vision after vision after vision of myself: peddling to work, talking to the kids, seeing them later at the grocery store, little by little regaining the self-worth I've laid to rest working at a job where I feel less than myself.

So tonight I will do what I've done before: buy a huge tub of chocolate ice cream and watch Gilmore Girls. Erase my new budget, schedule, spend the money set aside for the bike on something pretty and useless. And maybe tomorrow when I wake up at God knows when, I'll have the energy to make my bed and take a shower. Maybe I'll even make a few phone calls.

Then again, maybe not.