Lately, I've seen these digs at Taylor all over the place. So...let me get this straight. A 22-year-old girl/woman has a few (or a few dozen) breakups, and suddenly she's Elizabeth Taylor? I guess I don't really understand what exactly people expect her to do. Rush in and marry the wrong guy just to settle down? Stay for years in a dead end relationship? Join a convent? (It would be a shame to cover up her hair like that.)
It's okay, Taylor. I've got your back.
A year and a half ago, after a rather painful (yet not *that* unexpected) rejection (note: not even a break up. Just a rejection.) I lay awake at 3am counting how many breakups I'd ever had. The count, up to that point, was 26. Twenty-six.
I dealt with this painful realization the way I often do, with poetry. Forgive me if it's a little cliche (after all, it's a poem), but here it is:
Steel plated
This is like road rash
In the same way that childbirth is like a mild back ache
My heart hasn't been dragged through the mud
It's been tied to the bumper of your 4-wheel drive and splattered all the way up and down I-35
I need steel plates and a guard dragon
To protect it long enough to make it whole
Again
I need bumper lanes and training wheels
And a secret service detail
To save me from myself
And the worst part is how it doesn't hurt
The nerves were irreparably damaged years ago
Years ago
Some of those breakups are repeats, multiple breakups with the same person. When I was Taylor's age, the total count was 13, including a rather devastating broken engagement. (Hey, that's my favorite number. And hers. #notreallythatobsessedipromise.) These days the number is, um, 33. (Yikes.)
Obviously, I've done a few things wrong in the past 28.5 years. I know that. But *most* of these breakups have NOT been my idea. I mean, if I could have had a dime every time a guy said "It's not you, it's me"...I....Okay, I got nuthin to follow that up with, but you get the idea.
Many of the relationships weren't serious; some were. Most were short lived. In fact, I've only ever had one relationship last longer than six months (and that one, I think, lasted just seven months). That doesn't mean the breakup isn't painful. Just...different. And repetitive. And to watch friends all around me settle down and buy houses and have babies and pets, yet here I am failing over and over and over and over with no one willing to give me a chance...well...it really made me wonder what the hell was so wrong with me.
The point is, it's sucks. It isn't pretty. It isn't fun. And even when your roommate tells you "Don't worry. There's plenty of fish in the sea. Especially for skinny blondes with big jugs." it stops being comforting/funny and just...ironic after a while.
In the world of single parenting I've met a lot of people who are divorced. I get that I can never fully understand that...or, well, that I don't currently fully understand how that feels and hope that I never do. By the same token, though, I don't think someone who was married at 20 can understand what thirty-three breakups feels like. (Unless, of course, they've had 33 breakups of their own.) How numb (and sarcastic. and cynical.) you become. How hope becomes a little like a toothache that flares up when you least expect it.
I've had a post like this in the works for a while. I can admit that I'm a little hesitant to put it all out there like this. I know there are some who would look at the numbers I posted and judge me negatively. I can't say that I'd blame them. It's (more than) a little embarrassing. And more than a little painful.
But I also know that the right person won't care about all that. Because the past can't be changed, no matter how painful it was. I'm currently dating someone who I at one (okay, more than one) point swore I'd never ever get back together with. Like, ever. But patience has a way of winning me over, and time has a way of replacing pain with happiness.
Here's to keeping it all going.
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