History repeating itself

I was broken up with on New Year’s Eve.

No, not this year. It was a few years back. And technically, I wasn’t broken up with on New Year’s Eve exactly. That event formally took place on January 5. To say that one was broken up with on the fifth day of the year has less impact. Also, if I was paying more attention on the evening of the three hundred and sixty-fifth day of the year, it probably would have saved me feeling like I was blindsided several days later.

Warning (if you haven’t already figured it out): this is going to be one of those mopey postings, that I hope are infrequent enough to not detract future reading, but not anomalous enough that this alone presents a skewed image of your author.

Allow me to fill in some of the gaps:

This was back when I was dating the musician. And by musician, I mean the aspiring musician who really paid bills working in the service industry as a waitperson at an overpriced tapas bar. Possibly a redundant label: both the aspiring musician-waiter, but also the overpriced-tapas term. The AM-W was working at the bar on the 31st, and had originally invited me to come to the bar at around 20 minutes to midnight. This made sense: the AM-W had a job to do, and I, being a poor humanities grad student, could only really afford at most, twenty minutes worth of food (having exhausted all of the gratis service at the pre-Christmas tasting course the AM-W had arranged for us earlier in the month). Then, about 2 hours prior to midnight, I received a call from the AM-W saying that the place and he were both swamped (not unexpected) and that I shouldn’t come. Fair enough. Cue mild disappointment tempered with the appropriately supportive “Oh, right, I totally understand. Um, just give me a call when you get out.” “Sure, definitely, sorry.”

I then reconsidered my evening. It was too late to show up to any of the parties I had turned down. Showing up an hour before midnight, without a guest, to then spend the next hour explaining several times to different groups why I was alone only to then spend midnight itself awkwardly staring at others seemed less than exciting. So I waited. I caught up on just what Anderson Cooper, Ryan Seacrest, Carson Daily, and whatever MTV VJ de l’annee thought I wanted the soundtrack of my New Year’s Eve to be. 12:00 came. 12:00 went. Then came the awkward realization that I was now waiting by a phone for the absentee former New Year’s date to call. 12:15. 12:30. 1:00. 1:30. The AM-W finally called at 1:50. Not terrible by normal standards. Kind of terrible in that elementary school kid watching the clock to see when 3:15 will happen and realizing that it’s just barely 2:00. I’d like to say that the AM-W was appropriately apologetic. There was an apology, but this was quickly replaced with how tired the AM-W was, how many people had been there, how the restaurant was a mess, and how the staff didn’t know when they would be getting out. The fact that music and the sounds of a Long Island phoneme-filled  bacchanale seemed to be raging in the background went unacknowledged. So I ignored and responded I thought appropriately supportively:

“Right, no, I completely understand. If you want you can just crash here rather than driving all the way back to your place.” (Insert for clarity: my place was 10 minutes from the tapas bar, as opposed to the AM-W’s which was about 40 minutes away). “Nah, I’m just going make the drive and pass out when I get home. I’ll call you tomorrow or the next day, depending on when I wake up.” “Ha, ok, right, that makes sense. Um, well, Happy New Year!” “What? Oh yeah. You too. Um, I’ve got to go. Later.”

In recalling the conversation now, and situating it relative to what came after, I should have realized what was happening. What did follow? A trio of missed calls between the evening of the 1st and evening of the 2nd; an awkward sushi and movie combo on the 3rd where neither one of us mentioned NYE and the AM-W spent most of the meal staring around the room; the AM-W by my office on the 5th to say things weren’t working out so it’s better to end things now than hate one another. This is a sentiment that I still haven’t worked out the true meaning of. Then again, the AM-W followed this up with “I just feel that we’re too similar. And I don’t really ever see us getting married because of that.” (insert for clarity: um, marriage? I don’t believe that was on either of our radars at that point, and if it was on AM-W, it was never verbalized). I should have realized that being blown off on NYE was if not the exact end point, it was clearly the beginning of a rapidly disintegrating relationship.

So why mention this now (aside from the calendar relevance)?

I made a promise to myself that evening that I would not ever spend New Year’s Eve waiting for a phone call. Also, if I was seriously seeing someone, I would be spending it with that person. Short of overseas deployment or incarceration (the latter already being a dealbreaker) there was no reason for me to spend a NYE alone if I was in a relationship. And jump forward to the past two years with the PO.

Last year the PO was still on the fence about introducing their circle of friends to me. I figured I could sort of understand that since the PO’s plans involved an all night party at a friend’s house. House party associations notwithstanding, I was mildly disappointed, but legitimately understood given the relative newness of the PO and I. (insert for clarity: relative re-back together newness, having broken up in May, gotten back together in August, broken up in October, and back together in December… it’s an ongoing thing that I chose to treat as adorably spontaneous rather than mind-numbingly awful and psychically destructive). But the PO did call 10 minutes before midnight, profusely apologized, saw the error of their ways, and stayed on the phone with me until 10 minutes after midnight. It was sweet. And I would be lying if it didn’t give me some slight joy knowing that the PO had become “that” person at a party: the one in the corner on their phone all night long who everyone looks disapprovingly at and wonders why they invited them in the first place. At the end of the call, and in the follow up conversations, the PO declared that we would never do this again, and would spend next year together (the PO doesn’t plan short-term and has verbalized the “M” word many a time).

Jump to the 2011-2012 changeover. On the 27, the PO and I had a fight. Not a knock down, drag out (a phrase I hate) fight where we both say the most hurtful things we can possibly say to one another (see the reference to May and October above; also include the end of January and August of this past year in that as well… again, it’s adorable). Things had been good, and the fight was more of both of us venting frustrations over several uncertainties that both of us would have to face in the coming months (jobs, apartment leases, etc.). And then the PO disappeared. No calls. No texts, save for one on the 30th stating “Not dead. At work.” I’d like to say I responded to this rationally and even keeled and didn’t just start hitting redial when the third day without a call came. The PO and I had discussed the AM-W and had recently discussed last year’s shenanigans. I knew where the PO was: same friend’s house, same all night party, same everything. Down to me in my living room realizing that I had once again been cast to the side. The difference was that this year, there was no phone call. Nothing came at 10 minutes to midnight.

I wasn’t expecting it, given the radio silence that preceded it. I had reconciled myself to an evening of takeout and David Sedaris audiobooks. I decided I didn’t care about the fanfare that was going on 40 blocks north of me (take that millions of people crowding an already overcrowded cross-walk). One of the Sedaris siblings would save my evening, and he did. The only reason I knew that the midnight changeover happened was a 12:08 the PO finally texted me with “Happy New Years.” The grammar of the sentiment aside, I was left with a minor, reserved reaction of “WTF IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN!!!!!!” I chose for this to remain internalized. My younger self would have responded. My older self, with several more years of passive aggressiveness under my belt, did not. And so I maturely let the message exist in the e-ether. As did the PO. As the end of the next day approaches, neither one of us has responded. Me because I have no response (this blog posting being more of a cathartic release than a formal response). The PO because, well, the Giants game is soon to be on.

So I am left with this quandary:  what to do? Enact my own radio silence? Attempt to contact for clarity? Assume that the PO knows that dropping me for the New Year’s celebration has a very real consequence? This is assuming that the PO recalls my saying previously that “If you ever break up with my on New Year’s Eve I will never speak to you ever again.” What to do indeed.

Ok, end of mopey post. Musings about the whore upstairs will resume shortly I imagine.

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~ by undrawn on January 1, 2012.