Played

I am the best ex-girlfriend a guy could ever ask for.

I went to The Ex's play yesterday. I worked myself into a small frenzy early in the day, trying to put together the perfect outfit that seemed casual yet cool, obsessed about the kind of heel to wear, wondered if my hair looked too big. Arrived early, peppermint tea in hand to calm my stomach, walked around the block to kill time and try to walk off my nerves.

This theater. I blame this theater for the end of us. I know it's a lot to put on an inanimate object but I didn't start it, it did. This theater offered him a job last summer, after much fighting, he took the job down here without my official support, and he's never left. This theater meant more to him than keeping our relationship in tact in the end. It won, it got him, and I get to live here in its shadow, with the knowledge that if not for this one particular theater, I might very well be living in my crappy apartment in freezing Chicago working too much at a job I hate, cuddled under the covers, breathing in this man who I loved more than anything ever in the world.

I was rifling through the program once seated when I saw his mom and sister arrive. I ducked my head. I was there to look vaguely bored and nothing else. I was not there for small talk, I was not there for niceties. But they saw me. They saw me and we all awkwardly sat next to each other. I didn't know what to say, how to act, I always get the feeling that they never put much stock in our relationship anyway, that I was a passing ship in the night of their lives. And it turns out, I was. I sat with them, reacting to this play that was remarkably similar to what our life had become together, this play about a break up, about the last days, I sat there with his mom right next to me while I felt like I might cry over how true it all felt.

Almost three agonizing hours later, we exchanged pleasantries, well, if you can call his mother telling me she was 'sorry it hadn't worked out' a pleasantry, then pleasantries were exchanged before I hauled ass out of there and hid in the ladies room to compose myself.

While composing myself, The Ex sent me several messages wanting to make sure he saw me before I ducked out, and would I like to grab a quick drink?

No no no no no no no nonono.

But for some reason, for some reason, I said yes.

I saw his mother and sister one more time before he escorted me out, escorted me to a drink. We couldn't decide on a place and he suggested this new place, this new place where the one guy I happen to be newly seeing works. I adamantly shot it down. Didn't want to go there. Didn't want to lie and didn't want to tell any version of that truth. I was nervous. Nervous and not making sense, hating myself for giving away my nerves. But the thing is, we were normal. We were us, before we hated each other. Before bills and life and work and stability killed us. We were those first beautiful months in Chicago all those years ago, those first snowflakes that fell on us one night while walking to the store that first winter, we were bus rides to Chinatown, we were sitting around drinking coffee from a French press and making chili from scratch and sharing a tiny bed and wrapped up in each other all night long. All I can do of late is think of those first few months and want to cry over how it all turned out, how we ruined each other and turned on each other and can't ever go back, can't make it better, can act normal and know that there is something there, there was something there, that we had it special for a while before we ripped each other apart.