All Over Again
11 July 2011 at 9:18 pm

I deleted my Facebook account several years ago when it was interfering with my real life too much. It's too easy to Facebook stalk someone, make snap judgments, base my relationship with someone on their number of virtual friends (too many or too few - there's a Goldilocks number that is "normal," but it varies depending on the individual), their pictures, their fucking wall posts, the things they deign to Like.

I started up again a few weeks ago when several people advised me to, for yoga purposes. I plopped a picture of me in natarajasana, posted my schedule, and have been gently reintroducing it to my life.

Of course, there's drama already. The boyfriend set his relationship status to being with me (I can't bring myself to care why he's been Facebook single for the past year), which invited some crazygirl messages from his ex-girlfriend. He was just letting me know, not that he's been in contact with her, but that he's not in contact with her anymore. The discussion continued: why even bring it up? Something he said alluded to her accusing him of having cheated on me with she.

I never really asked too much about his past relationships. When it would come up naturally in conversation, we'd walk down that road, and it's not that I don't want to know - but I either want to know fucking EVERYTHING or just the excruciatingly relevant anecdotes. I want to know how often they had sex and what their go-to get-off position was, their brunch traditions, their worst fight, their most consistent fight, the most annoying thing about her, their nicknames for each other, what he felt when he first saw her, when he realized he was in love with her, when he realized he wasn't.

I don't really want to know any of this. It's just going to make the ice-winged butterflies currently terrorizing my heart go absolutely mental. I try to keep the conversation logical, try not to cave into my own crazygirl currently holding court next to my ear, a hormonally-driven shoulder-perched angel/demon conscience: she leans back on her chaise longue, a thread of smoke winding its way up from her rhinestone-studded cigarette holder. She exhales pityingly: "He obviously cheated on you early in the relationship, just like Aaron did, and now it's going to come up right before you move in together, just like with Aaron, all over again." It's all over, again.

I'm hearing all this over Skype, and it is 1am where he is and 5pm where I am, an hour before I have to go teach a therapeutic yoga class, where I have to be calm and controlled and centered, where I can't burst into tears like I did when I was a student in class on Sunday morning. I'm trying to be calm and controlled and centered, asking the point-blank questions: why would she be upset that you have a girlfriend? Why would she think you cheated on me?

He doesn't really have an answer for that last one. No, they didn't sleep together. No, they didn't kiss. Yes, they had lunch together over Thanksgiving; I knew about that, it was nothing, former lovers-turned-friends sharing a meal.

"It was closure," he says. Closure. Four months after we started dating. Huh.

It's just that tingling feeling in my chest, butterflies with wings of ice shards trapped in my ribcage, chipping away at my calm, collected center.

"You have a choice," my crazygirl says, putting out her cigarette in a vintage ashtray on the floor next to her roost. "You can choose to trust him," she rolls her eyes at the thought, "or you can trust your butterflies."

"But what if I'm just scared," I argue weakly, "and lonely?" She snorts in derision.

"Then you choose to be scared and lonely. And you look at who is making you feel that way."

I sign heavily. There's no arguing with that.

"You let me know if it's worth it," and she's gone, and I'm alone.

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About me
Hi. Morgan, 27, of Santa Barbara, CA. I am a hypocritical admirer of rhetoric (when it is my own) and an observer of literary trends. A secret: I don't take anything very seriously, and that includes myself.