Anatomy of a Break-up (Day Five)

Today was horrifying.

It was absolutely beautiful out and my daughter and I played Frisbee and football in the yard in an attempt (by both of us) to act like all was well in the world. Assface was scheduled to stop by around 1:00 and as usual he was annoyingly early. At 12:23 he shot me a text saying he was "in the area".

I'm going to take a second to say this: I fucking hate early people. Do you know what kind of people are always early? The same people who listen to sports radio when they could actually be watching the game because "the play-by-plays boost their imagination and enhance the game intellectually". The same people who have Post-It notes all over their homes with to-do lists that actually get done and positive affirmations they actually believe. The same people who like cats better than dogs and wouldn't want a dragon as a pet. Arrive 10 minutes early to everything? Congrats. Now you can sit and wait for people like me to finish checking our email and the final scores on a couple games.

This is what I'm doing while you're checking your watch.

Or I may be looking at pictures of Brady online. 

I could be hunting muskrats. But you know what I'm not doing? Waiting for you.

I digress.

The goal of the day, for both of us- other than him getting some small crap that he needed before the big move in a few days- was to talk to my daughter. She's 8 and she's the one who got screwed out of this whole deal. Period. Well, her and my dog, who really loved Assface.  But when he proposed the idea of talking to her about her feelings when he came over, I knew it would be fruitless. My child takes forever to process crap. Once, after a big cross-country move to the East Coast when she was 4, she acted like we had just switched apartment buildings or something- she was so cool about it. Then suddenly, two months later she started peeing on the welcome mat outside of the back door. She said it was because she didn't like it as much as the one at our old place. Dually noted.

Regardless, I'm so glad he had to suffer some of the awkward I'd been dealing with since the second we split.

My daughter's the type of kid who is badass by nature. I want to take credit for her, I really do, but she's just herself. In a way that is amazing. If you ask her a question, it takes her forever to answer it. But the answer is just what she wants it to be and almost always way cooler then you expected coming from an 8 year old. So essentially, you have an 8 year old who out-thinks you while giving you ample time to realize she's out-thinking you.



Once he made it over (early) we started out trying to talk inside; shooting the shit as naturally as possible. Meaning it felt about as natural as banging your sibling. You can't go from being together for 1.5 years to breaking up and hanging out like everything's cool after 5 days. But we tried. We talked about the Bruins, my daughter's school, anything that an 8 year old might want to talk about. She gave us maybe 2 sentences the whole time.

So I thought that maybe if we headed back outside and threw the football around she'd forget that she hated us and have a little fun and start talking after all. You know, like child psychologists do in their sessions only without the sexual touching revelations.

Nothing.

She threw the ball. She played Frisbee. She tackled Assface a little harder than normal, although he's a gigantic baby, so her tackling him always looks painful. She purposefully threw the Frisbee at my head even though she knows I have a thing about Freebees being thrown at my head.

Finally, we had to get on with some of the moving. Yet again, Assface and I did it as amicably as possible. We cracked terrible jokes the whole time, and offered to let each other "keep" little crappy things that neither of us really wanted to keep ourselves, but thought might make us look good for offering it to the other person. We talked about how this sure was hard, but we were SO GLAD we could all still be friends.

To speed up what I knew was going to be a really lame process, I had a few of his things boxed and ready for him in a nice helpful way. Not in the "I crammed a ton of your shit in a garbage bag, hope the glass I stuck on the bottom doesn't rip anything" type of way.

Don't get mad, get Glad. And hopefully herpes, asshole. 

And the whole time we were packing, nothing but pure firebombs from the little one.

You can't begin to feel the horror until you've seen it. It's terrifying. 

 

 Bio so you know:

 People think I'm joking, but when my daughter was 3, she started using the firebomb stare like she was Drew in Firestarter. When people see her doing it (because she doesn't even kind of hide it, which makes it funnier and creepier at the same time, especially when it's directed at random strangers) their first instinct is to laugh because this sweet little girl can't possibly mean to have that look on her face. Then the laughs start to sound fake. Then they stop and people just give her this puzzled "is she okay" look. Then they start to get it- you can see it working through in their heads. Then they walk quickly away. I would have stopped her from doing this long ago, except it not only gains us access to the bathrooms in the annoying stores that say "bathrooms for employees only", but she generally does it to people I don't like and have no need to talk to. So they leave, which is nice. Plus, I'm not so sure it's something I can make her stop doing. And if that's the case then I'd rather not know.

After he was packed and he finally realized that she wasn't going to deal with this whole thing today (though she did say she wanted him to come over on her birthday after everyone was gone- smart kid- milk the split for presents, I used to pray my parents would divorce so I could do the same), she gave him an awkward hug good-bye. Then I gave him an awkward hug good-bye and pressed my boobs against him as hard as possible so he could remember what he was missing. And as we waited for him to back out of the driveway and leave, Assface said one of the most condescending and moronic statements of all time to my daughter:

"Right now mommy and I are frenemies, and the reason we are breaking-up is so that we can go from frenemies to friends instead of frenemies to just enemies. Do you get what I mean?"

Seriously?

This is what comes up if you Google "frenemies". Assface is 37ish.

When he finally left and the assault on our ears was over, I asked her what I could do for her to make this easier. She said I could stop the break up, make Assface stop talking like he was in "Mean Girls", or just leave her alone altogether, and I began thinking that I might not be so happy-go-lucky about this break-up after all.

Suddenly, it wasn't just me alone without a best friend to watch the Bruins with; we were alone. Assface wasn't going to go to her next session of skating lessons. He wouldn't see her during horseback lessons or take her to see movies that I can't even fake wanting to go to. He wasn't going to bore the shit out of both of us during dinner with his talk about work or how good the flavor of the food was.*

* This one's such an irrational pet peeve, I know, but if we had stayed together and he had mentioned the word "flavor" one more time I would have shot him. Just like that, right then and there.

Assface: You know, the chicken's a little overdone but I like the flavor. The flavor has a really good component to it that I can't put my finger on. Did you use coriander to get this flavor?

Me: I just shot you.

I played out this shooting scene way to many times. Sometimes, when we were eating I would hold my fork under the table and pretend it was a gun and practice cocking it every time he said that word.

I don't know if other people having the same fork-gun idea makes me happy or scared.

I know that my child should be my first priority. And she has been in most ways. Every time I'd really lost my shit she was out of the house. When she did see me cry I explained why I was sad and how crying was a positive way to express yourself and how it was better than taking a pickaxe to things (which was a lie). And whenever I randomly started cursing at the air I told her there were mosquitoes and to never use the words mommy uses. And she's always safely in bed when I pop a few pills and pass out to Fiona Apple.

Today, after he left and my daughter was looking through what was now just my room, she asked if Assface was going to take the 3D Eiffel tower puzzle we all made together at Christmas. I told her no and she said "Good, because I hate that he's just coming here to get his things, just so he can leave us". 

The second she uttered those words I became cognizant of where she stood on all of this crap and how easily she could see through everything we were trying to fake. I remembered seeing right through my parent's bullshit. I could totally picture her little heart breaking inside of her. And I felt the best feeling ever return, turning my chest all warm and cozy: pure, unadulterated fucking anger.