Geography

It’s just geography, my parents used to say to me whenever I got the urge to run. You’ll still be the same person dealing with the same shit. There’s a lot of things about my parents that irk me but what bothers me the most is when they’re right. 

I was planning a trip to London shortly before my boyfriend broke up with me. I am a gossip by nature, so I always told him everything, but I didn’t tell him I was planning to leave the country until after everything was already booked. I feared that he wouldn’t want to come with me. That would devastate me given the fact that I would have gone anywhere with him. I gave him everything that I knew how to give. It would break my heart to hear that he was not willing to see more parts of the world with me. I could sense that something was not right in our relationship. I wasn’t totally sure what was going on, but I was beginning to feel like another person was taking priority in his life, which left me feeling like I didn’t know where I stood. I tried my best to show him that I really loved him, that I was a good girlfriend who was worthy of being the priority, but nothing was working. Maybe a trip to a new place would change that, but that terrible voice in my head that’s always right said otherwise. So I waited to tell him about London. Because hearing him say out loud that he didn’t want to come somewhere with me, didn’t want to share a new memory with me that was just between us, would have been the nail in the coffin that I wouldn’t be able to ignore. 

I finally told him while we were sitting in his car outside of my apartment building. He was smoking a joint. This bothered me. I don’t smoke anymore because weed makes me sad and paranoid. I don’t mind if other people smoke, live and let live and all that, but the fact that we met in rehab and he was losing interest in being sober left a bad taste in my mouth. I was becoming a total nag. I really didn’t like knowing that I was sober while he was high. It made me feel disconnected from him. I think what made me the most sad was that he really didn’t care what my feelings were about it. He was going to do whatever the fuck he wanted to do. This is no way to treat someone that you say that you care about. But I was hopeful. Maybe my London trip would open his eyes a little. Maybe it would get him excited about something other than weed. I was shocked when he said that he wanted to come. I got really excited. His passport was stolen a while ago but I’m a clever girl. I could get him a new one in no time. I began to envision this trip with him. I imagined us kissing by the London Eye, eating fish and chips together, wandering the streets while holding hands at night. We would have a good time together. We could forget about the parts of the relationship that weren’t working. 

I ended up going without him, of course. He moved out about a month before I was set to leave. He took his cats back not long after. I was left in this terribly empty apartment that I shared with him, haunted by the espresso machine I used to make him coffee in the mornings when he couldn’t get out of bed. I tried rearranging shit around the apartment once he moved all his stuff out to make it look more full. I tried to tell myself it was better this way. Now I could have my things the way that I liked them. I could have my own space to do my own thing. Now all that space looks less cluttered. But I still felt empty. Abandoned. The place looked like the home of someone who’s rather unhinged after he left. Newspapers and magazines lying about, stains from spilled soup on the couch, the books he rearranged so we could have more space on the shelf lying all over the floor as I tore through them looking for distractions from a broken heart, bowls and plates and mugs all over the place. I had no reason to clean now that I wasn’t sharing the apartment with another person. It was just me and my stupid TV, watching Hulu. 

Not even 24 hours after he moved out I turned on the TV to find that he had kicked me off his streaming accounts. Fucking prick. When I gathered the will to make myself a nice dinner instead of eating cup noodles I noticed the meat thermometer I used to cook him dinners was gone. Is this guy for real? What’s more, the Stephen King books he had given me that I was in the middle of reading were gone, too. Good riddance to this guy, I thought in the back of my mind. Who the fuck even thinks about a book when in the middle of breaking a girls heart. In the front of my mind, however, I was really unwell. TV, meat thermometers, books. These are the things he was concerned with while I was utterly distraught. I didn’t know what to do with myself. This was not a healthy breakup, either. The texts he sent me tore me apart. The last meaningful thing he said to me was “Lizzy, we just met. 10 months is not a long time to know someone, much less be serious about a relationship. I wanted to feel the same way about you as you did about me but I just didn’t.” Jesus. This guy is fucking shameless. He basically just said he spent almost an entire year lying to me. What the actual fuck is wrong with this dude? I cried and cried and cried. I didn’t understand what I did wrong. I was desperate to find proof that this person really did care about me. There’s no way he really thought of me as a random girl he somehow ended up dating who he didn’t actually love. I reread the texts that he sent me only a couple months before the breakup in which I was promised more than I got. He said that our relationship was a priority to him, that our lives were tied together. I held onto the memory of him saying that. I needed proof that what we had was real. I tried analyzing the situation in therapy, desperate for an answer as to why he ended things the way he did. I briefly started smoking weed again in an attempt to figure out if marijuana does something to your brain that would make you act so cruel towards someone who loved you. No dice. But how stupid could I be? 10 months isn’t a long time to know someone. I was a fool for thinking our relationship actually meant something. That’s my bad.

All the legends say the only way to overcome a troubling situation is by traveling. Cat Marnell did it when she bought a first class unlimited Eurail pass. Cookie Mueller did it when she blindly put a finger on a globe and ended up in Positano. I figured I might as well give it a shot. Besides, I couldn’t bear being in that apartment for one second longer. I couldn’t even handle being in Boston. Just knowing he was out there living a life without me in the same city was distressing to me. I fantasized that we would run into each other and he would apologize for all the things he said. He would tell me that he made a mistake. He would explain why he thought it was okay to toss our relationship aside with a simple “I just didn’t feel that way about you.” How silly, so very silly. This is a person who clearly doesn’t know which way is up. He is neither insightful nor compassionate. And this is a guy who’s getting his masters in psychology! Damn. Some people really do pick the wrong line of work. Off to London it is. 

I had a grand old time there. I went shopping at cool vintage stores in Shoreditch. I stayed in a hip hotel. I went for long walks. I ate delicious food. I had a really nice time forgetting all about him. Until I ran out of meds and had to go back to Boston. This won’t do at all, I thought to myself when I got back to my apartment. I’m still so fucking miserable. No, this is no place for me. There’s nothing for me here. 

I started planning a summer trip to Europe. Ibiza for the parties, Barcelona for the vibes, Sardinia for the beaches, Berlin for the techno clubs, Amalfi Coast for the Italian cure: Cute men, fast cars, slow lifestyle. It was set to be the perfect summer vacation. I had a fucking blast. I flew first class, stayed in nice hotels, ate at incredible restaurants, drove around in a brand new Audi, went to a sex club. I left all that sadness behind. I felt like the world was perfect, like it was never gonna end. 

I came back at the end of August refreshed and excited about life. I didn’t learn any life lessons while I was away. I just had fun. That trip was exactly what I needed. But we all know what comes next. Back in that fucking apartment completely alone. Too much time on my hands. No distractions. Just me trapped in my stupid body with my beautiful mind that thinks too much. Of course I thought about him again. Nothing I was doing was working. I read books, made some sick resin art, watched Housewives, made myself some good meals, listened to music on my speaker that he hated, but every time I laid in bed all I could think about was how he used to be there with me. All I could think to do was hit the road again, and this time I wasn’t coming back. My lease was finally up. I had quit my job a while ago. Absolutely nothing tethering me to the dreadful city of Boston. I put all my shit in storage and booked a one way flight to Zurich. Maybe this time I will find the ultimate cure now that I no longer have any sort of reason to go back to the states. Maybe this time I will find answers while still having fun. I would keep it light. I would prance around with unshaven legs and salty hair from the Adriatic Sea and I would finally know what it feels like to be free from unpleasant feelings. Here’s hoping. 

My friends all said enough was enough. I needed a rebound. Being in a foreign country with people I was never going to see again was the perfect place to make it happen. So I blew some 20 year old in the shower of a hostel in Switzerland. He had a girlfriend but was very much turned on by my tasteful Instagram nudes. I don’t blame him. My whole feed is a magnet for men who aren’t getting what they want from their girl. I look like a good lay, can’t lie. Which is a fact. I’m very fun to fuck. But the whole dick in my mouth episode lasted about 5 minutes. He said he was really nervous because he was intimidated by me, so he couldn’t get hard enough to fuck me. What a let down. The next day he was all over some other girl and asked her out to dinner right in front of me. Blech. I’ve never felt so gross after a consensual sexual encounter. 

My obvious next step was to text another guy with a girlfriend who I used to fuck when we were both single. Best sex I ever had. I would like to play around with him for the ego boost, I thought. I sent a few photos of my tits and we sexted until he came. I offered to get him a plane ticket to come and see me but he said it wasn’t that simple even though he wished it was. Sigh. Another fucking disappointment. 

What’s going on with men these days anyways? Throwing away perfectly good relationships, asking other girls out to dinner as if I don’t want something in my stomach besides dick, boosting my ego by masturbating to my nudes but not wanting to pull the trigger. All this made me so upset. It made me think about my ex even more. I missed him so much. I still miss him so much. I thought about him every day, still do. I didn’t want to be blowing random dudes in a shower. I didn’t want to be texting with men who were unavailable. I wanted to kiss and hug him and share the day with him. Tough. He’s gone and he’s never coming back, he’s made that very clear. He just completely disappeared from my life. The more I travel the more I realize that nothing I’m doing to ease the pain is working. Traveling isn’t enough, hookups just aren’t giving what they need to give, I’m still capable of thinking about him while huffing and puffing up the side of a mountain, I’m still crying over him while eating fresh caught shrimp. I even wore my new sparkly Nike dunks on a hike down to a gorgeous beach in Albania thinking that if I roughened up something pretty then I could see the relationship for what it was: a rough ending to an otherwise beautiful treasure. 

Every child hates learning that their parents actually know what they’re talking about. It really is just geography. I don’t know what the fuck to do anymore. Sometimes I think I should just call it and head back to the states. But then what? Nah. I’ll keep on running, running towards a sunset that I never got to see with him because we were too busy watching horror movies inside the apartment, running towards a mountain that I would never even think to hike with him because he’s out of shape and would probably complain the whole time, running towards a gorgeous beach that he would be bored at, running towards cigarettes that I could never smoke around him because he thought they were gross, running towards an uncertain future. One thing is for sure: I’m still the same person dealing with the same shit, but I’ve got a tan going, got my dirty dunks on, got the mountains in the back and a beach sprawled out ahead of me, I’ve got a little more sexual experience from the sex club I went to in Berlin, I’ve got precious new memories that are between me and those people I’ll never get to see again. I never got to experience the Italian cure, or the Spanish/Croatian/Albanian/Swiss cure, but I did get to experience the things he never wanted to do with me. I get to see all the things he had no interest in seeing. I get to go to all the places he didn’t want to go to with me. I’m not alone in that apartment anymore. I’m not alone on the other side of the world, either. I’m healing, slowly but surely. Now if only these men with girlfriends would stop going through my Instagram. Then I really would be living the dream.