It's Not Okay: Turning Heartbreak into Happily Never After (20 page)

Lesson learned:
Don’t lie, don’t deny, but do test drive it before you buy.

M
OTHER
FUCKER!
You are never going to believe what just happened. I knew this day was going to be difficult. It’s the day I’ve been avoiding like the plague. But I’ve officially run out of clean clothes, am tired of smelling like Febreze, and know I have only one option: get my belongings out of the old home Number Twenty-Six and I shared.

As if it isn’t enough to have to endure a messy breakup, nobody tells you that eventually you have to clean up all that mess. It reminds me of those times when you go out on a Friday night (which I haven’t done in weeks), and you search for the perfect outfit before rushing out of the house. You return in the wee hours of the morning after a raging good time, go to sleep, and awake to a tornado of clothes, makeup, shoes, and shit everywhere. Yeah, apparently my relationship was just an extended Friday night—a blast until I realized I’d have to clean it all up. Only this time my crap isn’t strewn across my own floor but probably on the floor of the closet we once shared. Like a silly lost-in-the-moment engaged girl, I decided to make the big mistake of moving in with my fiancé.

The truth is, I should have never moved in with him in the first place. By the time November rolled around and my lease was up, our relationship had been on a steady decline. All normal couples have their fair share of fights, but with the breakups and makeups and plenty of tears, our relationship was anything but normal. Nevertheless, we were still engaged, which made my decision whether to renew my lease that much more difficult. I could either sign another yearlong lease in my current apartment (which felt odd considering I was engaged) or move into Number Twenty-Six’s apartment (which felt odd considering we weren’t happy). Obviously, I decided on the latter and chalked the decision up to being the “next step” in our relationship.

As I boxed up my apartment, I thought how different it would be to “officially” live with Number Twenty-Six, even though we had practically been living together for months. I was terrified as I wondered what it’d be like. Where would I go to get away when I needed “me” time? How would all of my clothes fit in the closet? Would he expect me to shut off the lights when I left the house? Good Lord, what if I have to go number two?

I quickly realized that despite a few minor glitches, including an overcrowded closet, extra loads of laundry, and the claustrophobia every time we simultaneously attempted to get ready in the same small bathroom, living with him wasn’t all that different. We fought just as much, but we also had some hilarious moments while playing house. Little quirks, like how picky he was with his hair, quickly became apparent. He did have a great head of hair—dark, thick, always coiffed perfectly, and salted with a few stray grays above each ear. But that lush mane didn’t come without a little blow-dry action and a white wall for a background. Oh, yes, a white wall! Apparently, it was the only way he could successfully make sure each of his dark strands was in place. At first, this seemed ridiculous to me, but it ended up proving to be comical when one day we were out of town and—cue the gasp—in a bathroom covered in magnificent blue tile. This sent Number Twenty-Six straight into a panic. Flustered, he called me into the bathroom to explain this dire situation.

“What if you hold this white towel behind me?” he asked.

“Really?”

“Yeah, really, just while I do my hair.” He handed me a white towel that hung neatly on the rack.

Shocked, I grabbed the towel and looked around the bathroom for something to stand on so I could hold it high enough. I stepped onto the ledge of the bathtub, took a corner of the towel in each hand, raised my arms, and held that damn white towel behind him like my life depended on it. Now before you judge me, I should tell you that I didn’t do this out of love. No, I selfishly did it because I knew this would make one hell of a hilarious story next time I found myself sipping red wine with my girlfriends. These and other comical moments made living together fun at times, but no amount of levity was enough to avoid the turbulent fighting.

That’s the thing about living together that nobody tells you—it is undoubtedly the quickest way to find out if you’ll make it as a couple. It’s sink or swim, do or die, fight or flight. Yeah, the realness of living together can quickly ruin that happy-go-lucky, delusional bullshit fantasy life you dreamed about as a tween. There’s no privacy; you know where the other is at all times. There’s no escape; you don’t get to run and hide. You can’t say, “Hey, babe, I’m going to stay at my place tonight,” and then come back the next morning all lovey-dovey, with the I-can’t-believe-we-spent-a-night-apart feeling. And there’s certainly no sneaking in with wine-stained lips after dinner with the girls. And worst of all, nobody tells you that when it doesn’t work out, you find yourself totally screwed, just like I am now.

I’ve been waiting for an ideal time to go get my stuff, so when he tells me he is going to be out of town for the weekend, I figure it’s now or never. Knowing this battle will be difficult, humiliating, and time-consuming, I need help. I enlist an army consisting of one lone soldier . . . my mother. Lord knows I can’t do this alone, and whether she wants to or not, she is officially drafted to serve. Bless her heart.

My mom and I decide to convoy over to my old apartment, armed with two SUVs and a let’s-get-this-shit-done attitude. As we pull into the parking garage, I realize just how foreign the place I used to call home has become. So foreign that as I reach for my keys, I can’t even remember which one unlocks the front door. I stand on the doormat, trembling with anxiety, until I finally find the correct key. Taking a deep breath, I turn the lock and enter the battlefield. And that’s when I realize just what a spiteful asshole Number Twenty-Six truly is.

There in the living room lies a heaping pile of all my stuff. Not in boxes, not in bags, just scattered in random suitcases and on the floor like pieces of trash. WTF?

What fucking right does he have to mess with my stuff? I get that technically, it is his apartment, but didn’t he learn in kindergarten not to touch what isn’t his? Did he think he was doing me a favor? Some sort of charitable act by “gathering” my belongings for me? If he wanted to do me a solid, he should have stopped being such a pain in my ass all those months ago. But no. Instead, let’s just rifle through my drawers, the closet, the bathroom, and every other part of the apartment we once shared and pile up everything I own. Because that’s
so
helpful. Mounds of clothing, boxes of shoes, plastic bins of toiletries, stacks of picture frames, and stuffed suitcases all in a pile and shoved into a single corner. Enraged, and feeling an overwhelming invasion of privacy, I concede that he has gotten the first blow. Tears roll down my face as I look over at my mother standing shell-shocked in the living room. She is crying too.

“This is not right, it’s just not right!” she repeats as she shakes her head in disbelief.

It crushes me to see her cry. I know she is sad about the breakup, but she never lets it show, at least not in front of me. She always stays strong and positive, but in this situation, she can’t hide this pain, nobody could. There in the living room next to the pile of my stuff, we embrace as she sweetly tells me everything is going to be all right. My old apartment, once so filled with happiness and hope, now holds nothing but bitterness and anger. It takes a few minutes for us to regroup and decide that this is no time to wallow.

“Let’s just get this done and get the hell out of here,” I say.

“Agreed. I never want to see this apartment again.”

“All right, here we go . . . This goes there, that goes there, bag that up, trash that,” I direct my mom. The mess he created for me only gets worse when I head upstairs and see yet another pile on the landing. What, did he get lazy after too many trips down the stairs? I mean, if you’re going to start the job, at least finish the damn thing, right?

On my second trip down the stairs, I’m beginning to break a sweat when I pause and chuckle at the idea that it had to have taken him hours to pile all of this up! I can only imagine how many times he asked himself, “How much crap does this woman have?” I would have paid big bucks to see the look of disgust in his eyes. Serves him right, if you ask me. In between chuckles, tears, and the occasional shouted “Bastard!” my mother and I go into full beast mode. After sorting, stacking, trashing, and packing, finally it is time to load up our cars.

“I hope nobody sees us doing this,” says my mom.

“Like who?”

“You don’t think there will be any paparazzi, do you?”

“Oh, wow, I didn’t even think about it.”

“Okay, I’ll go first, scope it out, and pull the car around to the front door.”

“Text me when it’s all clear.”

The thought of paparazzi snapping a photo of me moving out, though unlikely, has me waiting in panic for the go-ahead text from my mom.

MOM:
All clear!

ME:
Doors unlocked?

MOM:
Yes. Ready, set, go!

With the car outside the front door and no signs of any paparazzi, I begin hastily shoving bags and boxes into the backseat. Having no regard for where anything goes, what breaks, and whether it is mine or his, I accomplish the move-out in record time. I take one last look around the living room and spot a small stack of framed photos of Number Twenty-Six and me.

“He can keep ’em,” I say, tossing them onto the stairs to ensure he would see them when he returned home. I open the fridge, steal two bottles of Powerade Zero, jack a couple of unopened bottles of wine, and slam the door behind me. Locking the door, I vow not only never to see this apartment again but also never to see or speak to him again.

As I drive to Kelly’s with my belongings piled so high in the back of my SUV that they obscure my rearview mirror, I realize what all of this really means. It is so much more than my possessions being thrown in a pile. It is beyond the feeling of being disposable. It is the feeling of disrespect from someone who had once promised to love and protect me. And I think most of all, deep down, the fact that he could treat any woman this way disgusts me even more. Chalk it up to a fit of rage or immaturity or whatever you want, but no real “grown-ass man,” as he commonly referred to himself, treats a woman like this.

And now here I sit sweating yet again because as grueling as it was to load my belongings into the car, it was even worse unloading them. The casualties of war now cover the entire floor of my bedroom at Kelly’s, which I’ve officially declared a disaster zone. Suitcases burst at the seams with clothing, wire baskets overflow with my toiletries, a laundry basket is spewing stilettos and sneakers, and random blue Ikea bags with Lord knows what in them fill every corner of the room. Basically, everything I own except my furniture, which I put in storage when I moved in with Number Twenty-Six, is lying on the floor before my sad and irate eyes. And being that this isn’t technically my room, I have to clean it up before Kelly returns from her ski trip tomorrow.

Suitcase by suitcase, bag by bag, I begin taking out the various pieces of clothing (many of which still have tags attached), and hang them in the closet. I’m about an hour in when I come across a navy blue striped V-neck shirt that doesn’t belong to me. No, this striped shirt belongs to none other than Number Twenty-Six. Well, I bought it for him, so legally it’s mine, but I did technically gift it to him. I toss it in the corner and continue digging through the rest of the debris. I come across the black leather Prada booties I bought when I was shopping with him, which he said were sexy. I toss those next to the striped shirt. The more I dig, the more I find things that remind me of him. I toss each one into the corner: the green dress I wore to our last red-carpet appearance, his stained white basketball shorts (gross), and some random articles of his clothing.

The pile of reminders is getting bigger and bigger when I come across a Prada box, which should have been housing my black booties. My heart stops. Not because the expensive booties aren’t in them, but because I know what is in that box. I take a deep breath as I open the lid. Damn! There on the very top is a picture frame with a photo of us, the photo we took and I had framed from the day we got engaged. My ring is blinding, but it pales in comparison to the sparkling smiles we both have. As I go through the keepsake box, I find more pictures of us along with copies of magazines we were in, and even the poem he wrote me and read aloud on our first date. A tear wells up in my eye as I reach for the bottom of the box and find the baseball card with my picture and his last name on it. It was the card he had made and gifted to me the night before we got engaged.

I feel as though I could vomit. Never in my life did I think I could hate a Prada shoe box. I can’t stand the sight of these mementos. Each picture, each trinket, carries with it an old memory, causing my blood to curdle. I need a drink. Is it 5:00 yet?