Shot of Emotions tale

WAKING UP ALONE
Smacked upside the head with the breakup stick

Have you ever woken up in the morning uncomfortably aware that sweat was layered on your body and feeling tacky like the cheap white glue they use in kindergarten? You lie there counting the pink gum spitballs on the ceiling and suddenly it hits you that you’re not at home. So then where are you? Your only hope is that you have been kidnapped, because God knows, this can’t be where you live.

As you sit up in bed a headache punches you right in the ear, causing a ringing in the head, and it’s not the kind that calls you to church on Sundays. The windshield wipers of truth sweep away the fog of sleep. There is only one thing it could be. You had been smacked upside the head with the breakup stick and this is the beginning of your new life alone.

 Some lucky souls may leave their beds on the first day alone in a new place and stand by their kitchen window after their breakup, take a deep breath of rotting garbage and cheerfully say, “I am so glad I’m out of that relationship.” But Lynda was not one of those people—yet. She was still to bear the burden of missing the man who had swindled her out of anything of value, with his sweet talking and convincing lies. It would be later that morning when she would find out the small, insignificant set of items she had taken from the marital home would set her on her way to forgetting him.

The Tale of Lynda

Lynda climbed out of bed into her new unfamiliar world that looked so much better when she signed her deposit check there, three weeks ago. It was true what they said about moonlight, it made everything romantic; even a cheap apartment. And this morning, daylight was not her friend. It was her first morning of living there all alone, while Chad remained in their original home. She fleetingly wondered if she had lost the coin toss for the marital home because Chad had used a two-headed dime. Being street-savvy was not one of her strong points, but at the time, he had convinced her that it was a fair way to divide up the property. Maybe she wouldn’t live here for long. Maybe hell would freeze over and Chad would take her back.

She stood at the carpet’s edge between bedroom and hallway, toes repelling something sticky in the course fibers. Caught in limbo as her two lifestyles crossed like red and black wires in a circuit, her old life fizzled out and the new one gained power. She walked the four steps it took to be in the center of her new kitchen. Yesterday, in the far-distant past it had taken several more steps to be in the middle of that culinary oasis. She looked around her at a neglected kitchen that a prior tenant had hurriedly excused himself from, and then she broke down and cried.

“Where is my big, beautiful, kitchen?” she demanded of the thin, grimy, fat-splattered walls whose pockmarked skin shone like teenage acne.

 “My marble countertop?” she asked the red, plastic counter which glared up at her scornfully with its curling red grin, showing the white underside of its belly.

“What happened to my tall, wide, refrigerator freezer?” she questioned the short, squat icebox that hummed its own curses over the silence of the room.

            Her body sagged and she felt at least a dozen years older.

“My view of the vegetable garden?” she whispered mournfully, holding back a tear from an eye that would rather have been closed to the scene. Her energy seeped away from her, and as she looked out the window, the overflowing garbage cans in the alley below didn’t answer her either, they just hung their lids in shame. 

She closed her eyes and it all went away.

When Lynda and Chad split up, Chad decided he would keep the big screen TV that they had shared, leaving Lynda to take the small one they had in the kitchen that only worked when the weather was calm. He kept the entertainment center with state of the art sound, so that he could wind down from his stressful job. Their two, new, advanced-technology computers were set aside for him because he needed them both for his work, generously leaving Lynda the stumbling, geriatric 18 pound desk computer that took the scenic route when booting up, instead of the highway. All of the artwork remained with him in order to impress visiting clients and all of the furniture, because it had been bought specifically for that house. Oh, and of course the house itself, won in a coin toss with a two-headed dime. In all fairness, because he was a kind and charitable man, he allowed Lynda half of the items they had bought together. And he was unanimous in those decisions.

She opened her eyes and it all came back.

Standing in her new kitchen, Lynda was suffering from downgrade shock. Her state-of-the-art clean kitchen was a mere memory that lingered thin and wispy, like the scent of a roast beef dinner. Suddenly she was on her knees on the splintered wooden floor, weeping with despondency, desperation and despair and then the phone rang. Rising up slowly from the floor, knees decorated with yellow grease spots and black Rorschach Test-shaped morsels from prior tenants, she stumbled to the phone. It was him. Her ex. He was calling to see how she was doing! Happiness and relief ran through her and every one of her problems immediately disappeared, as if released from a magic spell.

“How are you doing?” he asked her. “How’s the new place?”

“It’s fine,” she answered bravely, picking off a lump of black goo from her left knee and staring at it. “I miss you.”

“I miss you too,” he answered. “Listen, the reason I’m calling is because I’m wondering where the small spoons are. I need to have one for my yogurt and I can’t find any.” 

 A big fat silence followed that seemed to find its way into her head and then expand, making his words echo around inside.

She wanted to say to him “you heartless man, why don’t you have your girlfriend make a spoon with her thumb and finger and feed you your damn yogurt from her hand,” but she didn’t. She hung up the phone and looked around at her miserable little kitchen. Then she gazed unblinkingly at the black sticky mess on her finger. It reminded her of him and she smeared it on the wall. “There goes Chad,” she said to herself with a satisfied smile on her face. “One day at a time.” And every time she looked at the smear of greasy old nothing on the wall, it reminded her of his unkindness and she knew she was going to be all right without him.

Comment

After your relationship ends, you might find yourself like Lynda, downgrading perhaps from townhouse to trailer. Others may have benefited from their breakup, moving from ghetto to grandeur, but whether you are the abandoner or the abandonee, about 50 percent of people wake up in a strange place after a breakup, and it’s not always because they drank too much the night before and went home with the bartender. It’s hard to adjust to many new things, but to adjust to something unpleasant is worse.

Don’t you hate those people who say there is good to be found in everything? It’s easy to agree with that if you find it easy to fool yourself, but who wants to call himself a fool? It may be true that something good is on its way, but it’s not coming through the dark at you on an express train. It’s coming on a local train that makes many stops along the way before it reaches you, and there are plenty more corners for it to turn. There’s fog to navigate, rain to ward off and it still has to find its way to the end of the tunnel where they say the light is. So while it takes its own sweet time rumbling along the tracks and slowing down for cattle, pat yourself on the back for getting to step one of your new life. You have to start somewhere and it just isn’t easy. But you are still here on this planet and hopefully all of your body parts are functioning and still intact. Yes, that first day might be full of surprises, but like Lynda, you may be reminded very quickly why it was that you and your ex broke up.

Excerpt from the book Breakup Cocktail: 5 Parts Humor, 1 Part Healing and a Twist of Revenge from Barbara Kingsley Singer
Breakup Cocktail book contains about 60 Tales including this one, but without illustrations
Click here to buy now on Amazon.com
Copyright© 2012 Barbara Kingsley Singer