Thirty Minutes

Thirty minutes was all it took for everything I called normal to drastically shift and be flipped upside down. Thirty minutes was all it took for a ten month relationship to end and for every piece of my now ex-boyfriend to be removed from my apartment. His contacts case is gone, my apartment keys have been removed from his key ring (and his from mine), and his bike is no longer next to mine in the garage sharing a bike lock. That was it. It's over. And my heart hurts.

I know in the long run it is the right thing to do, but that doesn't stop my heart from aching or my fingers from automatically calling him when I leave work. 

As I drove out of the garage at work a few days after the thirty-minute incident I pressed the green call button on my steering wheel. 

"Call. Say 'by number' or 'by name'" said the voice coming out of the dashboard.

"Name"

"Who would you like to call?"

"Mr. Good Grammar."

"Call Mr. Good Grammar? Say 'yes' to proceed. Otherwise say 'back' or 'cancel.'"

"Yes."

"Calling Mr. Good Grammar."
 

Ring. Ring...
 

"No! Stop! Ah!"

I frantically hit the red button on the steering wheel hoping with all of my hardest hopes that his phone hadn't yet started ringing. 

I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to ask how his day was. I wanted to tell him about my ridiculous trainee in class. I wanted to tell him about what a pill Wilbur had been that morning before work. I wanted to ask him to come over and take a walk downtown with me. I wanted a hug. But I knew I couldn't. I ended the relationship and I had to suffer the consequences of my choices. 

My eyes started to well up with tears, so I pressed the green button again. I tried calling my mother, a co-worker, a friend from Thailand, a friend in California, and a friend back in New York. No one answered. I didn't leave messages. 

By the time I arrived home my head hurt. My head hurt from trying not to cry. My head hurt from trying not to think about the guy that I had spent the better part of my life in Madison loving. 

 

I am now able to count the time since the breakup in weeks, so hopefully I will soon stop counting the minutes. 

When my friend Jeff asked if the breakup was bad I hesitated before saying, "well, no..." It wasn't bad, but I definitely felt far from good, or even okay. I was grateful when Dan chimed in with, "good or bad, it's still a breakup." 

Thank you, Dan.

I didn't need the justification for my roller coaster-like emotions, but it was nice to feel a little less crazy.

I came into my office on a Monday morning to find the few items I had left at his place in a bag under my desk. He had warned me it would be there, but that wasn't enough preparation for the ache my heart felt. That was it. My stuff was with me and his stuff was with him. The end.

I have my good days and my bad days. Heck, I still have my good minutes and my bad minutes, but I will be just fine. I know that much crazier and more significant things have happened in shorter periods of time, but for me, and for my right now, those thirty minutes rocked my world.