2 Questions Every Girl is Asking Herself

Chapter 39

He held me for a long time and I wondered if this is still love, or just pity and guilt. He said he still cared about me. What the F does that mean? I in equal parts wanted to pretend nothing happened and resented him for breaking up with me.

I separated myself from the embrace, and went upstairs. I told myself, 'It's ok, if this one doesn't work out, there are plenty of trees in the forest. Why get hung up on one tree? I'll find someone better than Ed. ED IS SUCH AN IDIOT! He's going to regret this. Ohhh, he is sooooo going to regret this. I'm going to break out my kick-ass dress, and my kick-ass heels, and I'm going to a kick-ass party. I'm going to meet so many boys that I'm going to line up a date for every single day of every single week, starting next week.'

I narrowed my eyes, clenched my teeth... and (almost) hollered, "You wanna see how this is gonna go down baby? Oh, I'm gonna show you - "

And then a part of me interrupted, with a bitter laugh, "Like he's going to care? He just broke up with you."

As much as I'd like to report I walked away with my head held high, I didn't.

Every day I fought back the urge to call him or text him. Reminding myself if he wanted to talk, he would. I wrote long emails to him without ever pressing send. I wanted to tell him that I loved him more than I realized. I fantasized a million ways we are going to run into each other. I wondered what if he gets sick and needs to go to the hospital? Who's going to look after him? His whole family lives in Hong Kong. Or heaven forbid, what if he gets into a car accident? He always rides that darn motorcycle when he's in a bad mood. That thing is so dangerous. How am I going know if anything horrific happens to him? I'm not telepathic!

Everywhere I looked was memories of him. This was the desk where I received my birthday card, in which he wrote he hopes we will be together for a long time and signed off with love. When my school course registration popped up, his name popped up with it, as the emergency contact.It astonishes me that something so solid could be so fragile. Something so certain could disappear so fast. His sudden departure felt like a concrete floor that vanished into vapor, and everything I'd once stood on and stood for, felt confident about and understood to be true, is not. I felt frighteningly helpless. Everything I'd known about dating felt so useless. Like how I can accurately predict if this guy sitting next to me in the coffee shop is going to strike up a conversation within the next minute, felt so puny against the fact that Ed was just – GONE.

I questioned my everything. I scrutinized everything. Where Ed left off in absolving me from blame I certainly picked up the baton for him. I dissected myself and left no room for subtlety. What's wrong with me? How did I mess it up? Do I have too many guy friends? Am I impossible to look at without makeup? How am I immature? What's the mature thing to do in relationships? Am I not accomplished enough? Or smart enough? Am I demanding? Am I spoiled? Do I have princess-syndrome? Do I party too much? I wanted to analyze everything and understand everything so I can find the problem and fix it. I was never satisfied because I was never sure. As the analysis went on, my confidence plummeted with it. It was as if I was stabbing myself with self-doubt until I became a walking beehive of punctured wounds.

I asked my friends what was the longest break they had before getting back together. One told me, "three weeks." So I waited. During class, I strained my ear muscles to hear my phone vibrate. After work, I stood outside in the cold, staring at oncoming traffic, wondering which would be Ed. I wondered what I would say to him if I ever ran into him, knowing no doubt that I would burst into tears at the sight of him, without producing a single coherent sentence. I hated myself for being so pathetic. Would I ask him "why" again? Truthfully though, I don't really want to know. I just want him to come back. Perhaps the reason is too embarrassing for him to say. Perhaps it's too embarrassing for me to hear, or maybe it'll hurt more to say it than not to say it, or it's just something I can't fix. Perhaps it's just as his friend Basil said, "What she doesn't know can't hurt her."

And then one evening, a couple of weeks after the breakup, while I was knee-deep in the trenches of misery – sobbing and brooding, my phone rang.