On Breakups

You never think the last time something happens is its last time. This is the last time we're going to talk on the phone. This is the last time we'll eat at this restaurant. This is the last time I'm going to shower at her place. Or, perhaps, you rarely do. God forbid you ARE conscious of saying goodbye; the only example I can think of is as someone close to you is about to pass on. But I'm not talking about those goodbyes. I'm talking about the other ones. The far more innocuous (though seemingly more devastating) ones. I'm talking about breakups.

My last breakup - to a still good friend of mine, who we'll call Anne (to shorten a looooong story) - was, in all honesty, a great one. Sure, tell that to me THEN, but it was. Anne was a friend of mine - IS a friend of mine - that was going through a … situation at the time. And, me, I'm ALWAYS going through a situation or two, so we found in each other a solace. But she's a good girl, and, really, I'm a good guy, so you can't help but let feelings get involved, even if it's something as innocent as friends being friendly. And even though that's all it was - perhaps BECAUSE that's all it was, and I can look at it like a relationship but without all the usual "hate and heartache" - I started thinking about breakups. How they begin. And, of course, how they end.

Anne’s and my breakup deciding to just be friends happened over the phone. At work. My friend Andy Gattuso came into my office just as we were finishing the conversation, and, poor kid, he could tell I was in the middle of something, so he left. Half an hour later, I called him on his cell and got his voicemail, but went ahead and left the message, "Sorry, you walked right in on my breaking up with Anne." A pause, then, "Actually, that implies it was my idea. Really, SHE broke up with ME." Another pause, then, "We didn't really break up. I mean, we were never really going OUT, so we’ve … decided to just stay friends." A last pause, then, "So it's a good thing." Then I hung up. Five minutes later, he called back. "How are you?" he asked. "Yeah, you know," I said. He started laughing. "Ask any guy how he is right after a breakup and he'll say the same thing: Yeah, you know." I started laughing too. He was right. Anything else, it's a totally different story. "Sorry to hear about the game last night." The response? Twenty minutes on what went wrong, why, how it affected every single person there, the ramifications of the loss, and how we probably planned to kick the shit out of the opposing team (and the refs). But some guy says to some guy, "Sorry to hear about the breakup" and it's "Yeah, you know." Hmm. If only we'd been going OUT, huh?

There are two great bits I always think of when someone mentions a breakup. One is the old exchange that goes something like this: "Why did it have to end so badly?" "That's why they call it the end." (Poignant and true.) And this: How long til the pain goes away? (THE age old question, huh?) Well, if Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn are right – and aren’t they? – you take how long you were with the person, divide by two, and that's how long it'll take to get over them. Anne’s and my end didn't go badly, but it's still an end, and that's bad enough. Of course, I'm not sure how best to gauge the second adage here. I mean, what do I start with? The time I've known her? A year, maybe more. [This was originally written in 2005, but I liked it enough that I thought I’d include it here.] Or the time we were together? A month, maybe more. Okay, so either I have six months or two weeks to go. Of course, I think the rule works better if you can actually say you were going out. Though, really, the rule isn't much more than a teenager’s epitaph. But I didn’t do too badly as a teenager. (So not too much of an epitaph, huh? But I digress …)

My entire perception of breaking up with someone has changed over the years. Of course, my entire perception of BEING with someone has changed over the years. I'm not a teenager anymore, with a teenager’s perception of relationships and everything they entail. I'm an adult now, thirty, with a thirty-year-old's perception; everything from what's important in a relationship's chemistry to how much a realistic outlook should find its way into romance. And me, I'm always the romantic. Some have even said I fall in love TOO easily. Another digression, if I may. I wrote this in a journal a while ago - 27 October, 2003 - and love the bit about that.)

“I wrote the following in another notebook where I jot down thoughts for stories from time to time. I wrote at the top of it ‘Something For An Epitaph?’ thinking it might be nice for an old friend to say at a cloud-covered funeral before a rose-covered casket. It reads, ‘He said once, early on, way back at the beginning of his career: I'm a drunkard, that falls in love too easily, and likes to tell stories. Why'd he say them in that order? Did he think so little of his stories? We can only hope not. And after everything he gave us, what can we give back? Too little in comparison. The best I could come up with was this: may the bottle be full, her arms open, and the audience kind.’"

I like that. (This writer's GOOD!) Anyway, one's viewpoint of love as a teenager is vastly different than at thirty. And it SHOULD be. It's easier to be more romantic as a teenager. And it's (sadly) easier to be more realistic at thirty. But thirty can be good, too. Not because of the realism, per se, but the little bit of wisdom you pick up is good. And UNDERSTANDING others in a relationship is good. Understanding that there IS an other, for instance. That it's not all about you. And that The Other has a past of his or her own to deal with. To let go of. Or fold into yours. As a teenager there's not enough of a past that it decrees to be dealt with. But there sure is at thirty. And that's okay. Because it's part of growing up.

And it's easier to let go as a teenager. (May not feel like it then, though, and fair enough.) Well, at thirty, you kinda feel like hanging on to a few things. And lovers, some of them anyway, start to fall into that big time. When you're a teenager, you spew so much hate after breakups. "I never want to see you again!" Well, that isn't love. (And I’m not saying a teenager can’t love; rather, I’m just saying that, at thirty, I try not to fold so much hate into that rarest of emotions anymore. But there I REALLY digress …) The more I've been in relationships, especially in the last, say, five years (with the maturity and wisdom I hope I’ve sponged) the more I've been able to appreciate them; and, therefore, the less I've found myself damning them. I wouldn't damn my ex-wife, for instance. Some of my girlfriends, maybe. Anne? Not at all. (Haven’t forgotten about her; I’m not REALLY veering off topic, I promise you.) But, then, it's not as easy as it used to be to cut people out of my life. So being able to stay friends with some lovers - not just me, I'm generalizing again - becomes easy easier because Love, for all the different hats she wears, still means something. You realize you still want that person in your life, even if you realize you don't work as a couple. And somehow that makes the breakup easier. (Well, less BITTER, anyway.)

So it was late on a Wednesday afternoon, and I was standing in the Enterprise parking lot next to the Burbank Airport, waiting for my roommate Lucas who was picking up a rental car after his was totaled in an accident. (He's fine now.) My phone rings and it's Anne, calling from Las Vegas, where she’s working (she’s in P.R.). She'd been fighting a cold, and was quickly losing, spending any time she WASN'T working in the hotel room. We chatted only briefly, about nothing in particular, the conversation short, as she wanted to get rest. We said we'd talk again the next day, said goodbye, and hung up. I walked around the corner to where Lucas was waiting for his rental, none the wiser that Anne and I wouldn't talk again for almost a week, and by then she would have already decided our relationship was over.

I wish I could say I hadn't seen it coming, that I could play the cursed soul, dumped by the heartless other, but I can't. For the brief time we were together, it WAS nice. We WERE a solace. And, however sincere that solace was, it WAS time to move on. She resolved her situation; or, rather, decided that she needed to, and it would be best for us to just be friends. But whether or not we were really going out, how short the time was, how wonderful it was, or how perfectly it ended, it's still an end. A breakup. And, so, needs to be dealt-with like one. Perhaps with a laugh, or a quipped "Yeah, you know," or a melancholy revel and a bottle of Crown (or all three). If Love is the only emotion everybody knows but no one understands – and what a great line THAT is - well, we're each-of-us only all-too-well friends of that great End Of The Affair; when, dumped or dumpEE, we start over. The end, then, just the beginning.

A final thought, if I may. A rare P.S. to these entries of mine. I mentioned at the beginning of this that I was thinking about how breakups end (of course) ... but, as I write that last bit, I can’t help but think about how they begin. And I suddenly thought of the 311 song 'First Straw,' and how it talks about not allowing ourselves to get to that cliché place that so often breaks more than just a camel's back. When we look back at lost relationships, with our twenty-twenty glasses on, we try to figure out what went wrong or, worse, where we can place blame. And somehow that last straw is always so clear, isn't it? Sure. Why? Because it's usually something as stupid as leaving the toilet seat up, or decorating with one too many doilies. It never has anything to do with what the problem really is. It was simply the one last thing to push you over the edge, down into that great pit of "get the hell out." Toilets. Doilies. Bullshit. When all you have to do is talk to each other. Be honest with each other. Share. So that that first straw - the one we never recognize - never has to lead anywhere else. And, God, what a truly perfect end THAT would be.