There’s an inherent law to the Universe. If one thing goes
wrong, it might as well be everything.
I’ve been known to take my time when admitting where I’ve
gone wrong and my last relationship took quite a few break ups and life lessons
to get me where I am today. Where am I you ask? Well, my friend, I’m in a
little world of my own; single and alone. It wasn’t always this way, I used to
be 30 lbs lighter, a whole lot funnier, and in a simi-committed relationship
with a guy who could make burnt toast seem exciting. Boy! I was living the
life!
We‘d been together for about a year and a half, and at that
time we were trying to get over some of our many looming issues. I guess I can
see why he’d be upset. Early in the relationship I cheated on him, at the time
I had assumed the maturity of a teenager who had never truly committed to
anyone. I was young and foolish and did a successful job of ruining our
relationship to a point where, as much as I tried, I could not fix. It wasn’t
until a few months after I cheated that I actually fell in love with him. I
grew to know the comfort of a man who loved me enough to stay, and a boy who
loved me enough to be in the mess I created. This was only six months in.
Another year went by, my efforts showing how committed I could be, but inside I
still knew he was guarded. He didn’t play or laugh anymore, our love had died,
the fun was dead and it was just a matter of time before I’d be forced to call
it quits. I started to drift back into the same ass hole person, especially
when the guilt came back. I can’t really explain it, but I blamed any of the problems
in our relationship on him because he couldn’t forgive me. I didn’t understand
how someone could want to stay in a relationship full of problems and yet never
do anything to try to fix them.
We met in a small
military town in West Texas that I had been
desperately hoping to get out of. I was working all the time and getting into
shape, he was stressed out because he was stuck in a marriage with a woman that
he couldn’t be in for obvious reasons. I had already been saving to move to Austin when he met me and
I never expected the relationship to really go anywhere. I figured he would
forget about me when I moved to Austin…
but he didn’t. He came to see me every weekend.
It didn’t end completely the first time we broke up, we only
took a short break but it was our first “real” break up. We took a six or seven
month break and eventually got back together only to break up again another year
later.
Knowing we couldn’t make it on our own financially added to
the worry of splitting up and in our first apartment in Austin I started
anticipating the decision I’d have to make when our lease expired. We found a
new apartment but I was reluctant to get stuck with him for another year. I
couldn’t live another year feeling trapped. I broke up with him about a week
before we had to move. He never had the strength to make tough decisions and to
this day it still peeves me. He probably would have stayed in the unhappiness,
living in despair for years before calling it quits. I was severely depressed
after we broke up, I thought he’d fight for the relationship, make a gesture. I
wanted to see a change and to no surprise, I didn’t. The spark, the life, the
energy that drives a person could not be found in him. He was like a race car
whose battery was draining out except he didn’t eventually slow down to a stop.
It was like he was suspended in the sluggish dim 10 percent battery zone since
I met him that just never ended.
I started drinking a lot the few days following the break up
and one night I went a little too far.
I had just finished my side work in Bianco, the most
difficult and hectic section in the restaurant to serve in. I was stressed,
tired and beaten. My co-worker, Joyce, convinced me to spend all of my tips on
shots that night. She was a middle-aged mother who never left the party days
behind her. One night after work she invited me over to her house where more
people were supposedly going to show up. We started drinking and at some point
she got comfortable enough to show me her jugs. I thought to my self, “self, is
this how cougars trap their prey?” Any who, that was water under the bridge so
we went to a bar that had the word “shots” on the front of the building. Shots.
Oh god. Shots and more shots followed to an argument with a bartender. I don’t
know what we fought about but to this day I still feel that I was right. I
don’t remember how I got home that night actually. All I remember is waking up to
my ex-boyfriend gently tapping me as if tinker bell had enchanted me during my
slumber. In a muttered tone under his breath as though he was trying to keep it
a secret he said, “Umm, I think you flooded the apartment.”
Half awake, half asleep, “half Mexican,” a hungover mess of
a man of me slipped one leg after the other off from the dry silky sheets into creamy
wet carpet. Tips to every toe felt the set in dust and dirt that had been
collecting over time like bits of salt in the water at the beach. This,
however, was no vacation. My ex soon enlightened me to my mistakes from the
night before. I got home late, ate everything in the kitchen, tried to start a
fight with him and then proceeded to throw up for a good thirty minutes. I must
have clogged the toilet because it backed up enough water over night to flood
almost every room with a few inches of water. I wish I had an overflowing
toilet every time I tried to fill up a swimming pool, that thing would be full
in minutes! Luckily, somehow, the vomit flushed and only regular water found
its way out.
I called the emergency hot line to get one of the
maintenance guys out and assumed that it would take more than ten minutes for
them to get there. I panicked. The maintenance man showed up and my ex let him
enter the apartment even though he knew I was in the bathroom wearing nothing
but my whitie-tighties. As I yell from the bathroom for Mikes help, the
maintenance man bellows into the bathroom with no shame. I could have been
wearing nipple clamps, this guy wouldn’t have taken a second look and yet there
I stay, shoveling water into a half gallon pitcher trying to get as much down
the bath tub drain as I could. I still use that pitcher for iced tea.
There was only one corner of our apartment that seemed to
stay dry and that’s where all our stuff ended up. We were getting along for a
while, too tired to worry about our break up. That night we went to the hot tub
to wind down, we always had our best talks in the hot tub but could not stay in
for more than thirty minutes or so because of how hot it would become. We made
the short walk to the disaster that awaited us in our apartment. Earlier in the
day during the water extraction and remediation process, we were forced to
stack all of my furniture in a corner space in the living room so that the
water guys could suck everything out of there with their elephant hose. When we
arrived at our front door we noticed that it was cracked open by at least a
half a foot. We thought it strange but didn’t entertain any other ideas once we
made it inside. We were able to agree on a movie that night and thought we’d be
able to turn in early. Charlie had other plans in mind.
He was a swift little bastard and cute as a button; as cute
as the kind of button you’d see hidden under the beer belly on the blue jeans
of a guy who works overtime for an oil rig.
We spotted him half way through Minority Report, an actually great science fiction film where a
pre-crime investigator, Tom Cruise, pre-came on all of the murderers he caught.
Karma was a bitch when it turns out that Tom Cruise himself was going to be
playing sex darts with the same agency he’d worked for. My ex was usually
asleep by this point. He always insisted in arguing for the movie he wanted to
see and then he’d fall asleep 40 minutes into it, leaving me finishing whatever
crappy bro movie we ended up with.
Charlie must have thought we were asleep or maybe he just
wanted to see what all the fuss was about in the movie. My ex spotted his
gleaming little eyes as he darted through the hall way outside of our bedroom
and landed himself somewhere in the living room. He had been drinking the left
over water behind the toilet in our bathroom. My ex never showed much
excitement for much of anything, except when it came to bugs, rodents, and
aliens. My ex screamed like a brace faced 3 grade girl when fat Tabitha comes
around to pull pony tails. I imagine fat girls named Tabitha or Candice are big
bullies in grade school. He climbed to the top most region of the bed and
physically pushed me to go see what it was. Bitches be bitches right? So, there
I am equipped with nothing but a curtain rod and the Minority Report movie case,
thinking there was probably a rhino in the apartment or an actual alien. I try
to get my ex to describe what he saw but all he could say was, “red eyes!” This
was actually pretty accurate once I finally spotted the little guy stuck behind
the couch, hissing like a stray cat as it gets torn apart by an alligator.
I didn’t want to actually grab him by my hands because, who
knows, he could have rabies! I
thought I’d be able to cattle prod him with the curtain rod and lead him out of
the front door. This was obviously more than a one man job. My ex started
recording the entire show as if it were some pandemic. Like an outbreak in the community!
He ended up in the bedroom and with all of our future stacked
up it took hours to move everything and then he’d just run, again, underneath
everything we’d stacked up. I was ready to give up and after a few hours
decided to tell my ex that we could just worry about it in the morning. His
response verbatim was, “That red eyed demon is going to lay eggs in my mouth
when I’m sleeping!!” Being the good ex boyfriend I was, I spent even longer
after that chasing Charlie from under the bed, behind the entertainment center,
dresser, under the couch and finally into a corner in the bedroom. I grabbed a
blue towel and scooped him up into it holding him like I was Sacagawea on the back on the gold dollar. Having him close, I was able to get a
better view and smell of him. He was a baby possum, furry and pink. Insert inappropriate
joke.
He was actually pretty cute and after holding him for a
minute I thought it’d be nice to keep him but my ex was right. It wouldn’t be
fair to bring him in to a broken home so we ultimately decided to release him
into the wild. The wild pool area.
So there it is; your proof to the biggest law to the Universe. When shit
hits the fan, it sticks and spreads to every propeller.
