Vol. 1, Post #40 The Breakup
It's over and all the old triggers are coming in hot. My ongoing sex tips for girls* (*girls who are holding on to mid-life by a thread). A dating odyssey for Young Olds, AKA, people with readers.
I’m waking from the kinds of dreams you have in the morning after you attempt to get up at an earlier hour, only to just pee and return to bed. You know, those dreams where things are highly disorganized, maybe with uncompleted tasks, phone calls that you can’t seem to complete as you try to punch in the number, random people just walking in and out of the mind’s eye freeze frame. Once awake for the day, finally, I’m sitting up in bed, disoriented and full of dread. Overflowing with it, in fact. I glance at the dog still snoring away, that lucky boy, and then my first thoughts go to other breakups, and how I got through them.
Since 2019, I’ve loved and lost three significant former partners and, in this moment, I start to review how I got through the pain, looking for rungs on the ladder out of the despair I’m now feeling about the end of another relationship, wanting to get myself back on track. For that matter, I start thinking about how I loved those former partners and what I miss about them, because in my misery, my mind is racing to just “do” something else, to focus on something familiar and therefore, manageable, like oh I remember that period of unhappiness after a split, AND I also remember why I was somehow so attached to that relationship, AND then I figured out my own role in why it didn’t work, AND finally I walked away smarter, so I’ll apply that logic here and see if it sticks. This will help, right?
I’m old enough to know there’s no way through a breakup except just full steam ahead, embracing the roller coaster that will come, hoping the nausea is treatable. But this breakup feels bigger, more contemptuous than before, and I don’t see anything to do except just soak in the rage that has enveloped me. The despondent rage.
America dumped me and I don’t really know what to do next.
Dear Readers, if you’re thinking, “Abbe, I was kinda hoping that you’d write about something light-hearted this week because I really can’t take any more upset in this moment,” I understand. I’ve been trying to harness some pleasure, in the form of walking in nature, looking at art, even mopping the floor. Mopping the floor is one of my favorite things to do especially while I’m alone, listening to music, the house still and otherwise silent, and right now I just want to be alone as much as possible because I don’t entirely trust myself around people. Cooking and baking are soothing as well. Here is the recipe for the infamous Levain Bakery Dark Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies. Each cookie weighs about a quarter pound. Get on that.
I can’t help equivocating this collapse in democracy as an extremely personal heartbreak, not just to me but to many people in my life who I love the most: namely, women and the LGBTQ+ community, as well as Jews and other targeted minorities.
Tell me if this resonates with you:
You’re in a relationship with someone and it’s a grounded, considered one. You have mutual respect for each other, and you consistently do things to show you care for one another. Years go by. Decades even. Then, you start to get the impression that your partner’s attention has shifted, even slightly, and then, it becomes truly diverted. You question this, first with curiosity and then dread and, sometimes, redouble your efforts to stay connected and to be seen. If you are healthy, you make your concerns VERY known, in the hope that your partner will say, “Oh, fuck, YES, you’re right, sorry, I’ll circle back to you and to us and rededicate myself to this.” But sometimes, they only sort of do that, in that they “breadcrumb” you while they still allow their eye (proverbial or real) to wander over to other attractive potential partners (in this scenario, you are a monogamous couple, not poly, or more specifically, not poly with the necessary understanding that to love more than one partner, you must be measured and sophisticated in thought to be present in multiple relationships at once.)
After a while, you find that the attention your partner once held for you is no longer focused on you in a way that makes you feel good and even worse, it’s not getting better. Sometimes you fight for your relationship; sometimes you walk away.
In the end, if your partner blows up what you two had and in the midst of the devastation, they realize what they’ve done, they often come back — crawling, running, or combo of both.
And then, you get to decide…can this relationship be saved?
If you’re a Young Old like me, and if you’ve been single or single-adjacent for some time now, you know that you can get along surprisingly well without a partner. In many ways, a partner can be an albatross, right? You sometimes need to slow your roll, compromise (ugh who truly likes that?), do things you don’t want to do even a little bit (the darker side of compromise), and smile through it all. Once you get a taste of self-sufficient independence, as well as a drawer full of sex toys that make sense to you, why not go commando?
As I’ve said before, if I was in a plain white room free of any decoration or distraction and there were two doors on the other side of the room, one of which I HAD to choose and walk through, and the doors were respectively marked “Have a partner” and “Go it alone,” I would select the Partner door, open it, and walk towards my fate. I enjoy being partnered and understand compromise in all its eye-rolling forms.
However.
Being partnered to someone who has shown their true colors via a general lack of respect, a lack of communication, a lack of prioritization, and a roving eye is just a recipe for disaster. No one will be happy, and eventually, someone will have to leave.
That’s me. I’m leaving. Not the United States (at least, not at this moment) but the Democratic Party. You’ve fucked me over one too many times with your ridiculous antics to try and attract others who want nothing to do with you (“moderate” Republicans who might get turned on while you tongue-kiss Liz Cheney? Women who will '“secretly” vote for you and not tell their husbands? Suburban white folks in gated communities or country clubs in the upper echelon of tax brackets who “vote with their pocketbooks”?)
Here I sit, wondering what changed for you, Dems. When did it all go sour? I mean, let’s face it. I’m the perfect partner for you. I’ve got everything you want and need. I’m dedicated and I’ve proven it with the hours, days, months I’ve spent marching, canvassing, organizing, fundraising, writing checks. You wanted me to don heels, dress it up and shake my ass for you amid martini drinkers in million-dollar apartments? Done. You want me to sip beer, pick apples, square dance in farm fields? On it. Ride the buses to Washington? Yup. Keep copies of dog-eared petitions in my bag and make anyone who can grasp a pen add their name? Childs’ play. Not enough for you? You greedy fucks.
And now, Dems, you want me to rally around you and around this make-believe version of “being strong for what comes next.” Sounds like another load of horseshit — kind of like when you find out your ex is bringing a date to your child’s wedding or bar mitzvah without discussing it with you first, with zero thought as to how you’ll feel about it. “C’mon, we’re all adults.” FUCK YOU. Usually, I’m a BIG fan of modeling for children that sometimes people break up, that we go on to love others, and that we can still show respect for what was once sacred, but my tank is empty. I’m raw and petulant and not interested in modeling anything besides self-preserving rage and no, I don’t wanna rally the troops. “Now is the time that we show them we won’t go down without a fight”? Go ahead and fight without me. I’m soldiering on with my own people because YOU, Democratic Party, YOU have been trying to sleep with the enemy, and now you can sleep alone.
Do I sound bitter? It’s because I AM.
Most of us are familiar with Dr. Kubler-Ross’s Five Stages Of Grief. In 2022, another physician amended the stages with two more, Shock, and Testing. Currently, I think we’re all in shock. For me, I can’t believe this is where I’m going to be living for the foreseeable future.
I’ve written here before about heartbreak after a love affair ends. And just like in romantic heartbreak, we often surround ourselves with our dear pals so we can tell the same stories over and over again, agog in disbelief, repeating the same information out loud, Rubik’s-cubing it in the attempt to make sense of what happened. Cue the soundtrack.
And… (this next part in tiny font, if that were possible. Or the smallest, quietest voice.)
Sometimes while we are just blathering on to our friends, we are also silently stealing looks at our phones and DMs, hoping against hope that the person who did us dirty is reaching out to say, “I can’t believe what a fool I was. Please forgive me. Let’s work it out. I’m ready to step forward towards making this better.”
Not happening. I’m changing my number. Below are the orgs I am supporting and focusing on as we seemingly, numbingly march towards Armageddon — and PLEASE NOTE, you will see when you go to some of these websites that they now include an option called “Quick Exit,” which means that should someone walk up behind you and see what you are searching online, you can click an “escape” button that takes you to the local weather forecast (maybe you’re a 15 year old Black girl in your local library in Alabama desperately searching out how to get an abortion, for example). Likewise, some of these sites remind you to erase your browsing history if you’re on a public computer.
YES, THAT’S WHAT IT’S COME TO!
Consider giving time and money here:
https://www.yellowhammerfund.org/
https://shoutyourabortion.com/
https://www.thetrevorproject.org/
https://www.aliforneycenter.org/
https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/
In the meantime, Democratic Party, get yourselves some wake-up-call therapy. While I will always vote Blue in our current two-party system, I will no longer make myself available to you. You can suck your own dick for a while. We’re through.
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IMAGE AT THE TOP OF THIS COLUMN are three different versions of the tarot card that most universally speaks to heartbreak, Three of Swords. As you might recall, I was doing tarot readings for Kamala, in which you donated $50 or more, and I gave you a tarot reading. Through this, we raised nearly $11,000 for the campaign. If you’d like a tarot reading and want to donate $50 or more to any of the above orgs, please let me know.
Yes, yes, yes.
For real offer on the tarot card reading?
How'd I miss that?
Oh Abbe. Thank you for articulating what I feel.