Undream the Echoes

Elle
05.28.1998

The day I break up with my nineteenth boyfriend also happens to be the day that I meet the man I am going to marry. I’m standing in the line at the grocery store and I look like absolute and utter shit. My makeup is streaming down my face from hours of crying and I’m wearing my ugliest, most tattered sweats I own. Usually after break ups I look terrible not because of sobbing or eating ridiculous amounts of cherry-vanilla ice cream, but because I am so sad and miserable that I actually enjoy looking this bad. I feel like being ugly because then I can say, Wow, I really am hideous, it’s no wonder why [enter name here] broke up with me. I know it’s sad, I know it’s pathetic. But since boys are idiotic assholes and hardly ever give me a good reason why they’re breaking it off with me (I just want to be friends, It’s not you it’s me, I just need some breathing space), I like to give myself a reason so that I feel better. I don’t like feeling this horrible without a purpose behind it, so making myself look ugly and making up a reason for being dumped does, in fact, actually make me a bit happier. Or maybe it’s the ice cream. Who the hell knows.

I am carrying nothing but a gallon of milk and a jar of pickles and, of course, tissues, which I rub against my reddened nose every so often since crying makes my nose run a lot, like so much that I’m embarrassed for myself and I wonder how on earth my nose can contain so much fucking snot. I don’t know why I’m buying these things, since I really hate pickles and I’m lactose intolerant, but I’m doing it anyway. I came to the supermarket to do something, to distract myself. Sitting on the couch watching sappy movies and eating everything in site only keeps me entertained for so long. I just wanted to do something, anything, so that I could pretend I have a life and things to do. It helps me keep moving forward. And moving forward is what I do best. Sure, I’m a wreck after break ups, but I only allow that to bother me for a day; because then I have a new boyfriend who’s so much cuter and funnier than the last.

And I think that everything will be better than the last go round, I really believe it, but then every time it ends the same exact way, with the same stupid reason and the same stupid tears and the same stupid ice cream and the same stupid pickles and milk. (But it’s not always pickles and milk; sometimes it’s a good movie, a call to my mom, or a very long conversation with myself in the mirror.) And I really hate it, I do, because although I do enjoy engulfing myself in self pity, I really do not enjoy crying or showing any other emotions for that matter. It’s so much better to be a rock, a tree, something unchangeable and invincible, because then the cruel and brutal world can never harm you. It’s the only way to survive life. It’s the only way to be okay.

I don’t really know why I expect my relationships to ever be different. I think it’s my fault – I must not be trying hard enough to make changes in my life. Whatever. I don’t care. I’ll just do the same thing over tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. Isn’t that what life is all about? We do the same thing everyday, sort of, with only a few minor variations. We wake up, we go to work, we eat, we laugh, we suffer, and then we go to sleep and wake up to do it all over again. It’s a vicious circle that everyone is forced to comply to, and no one is powerful enough (or conscious enough to realize how pitiful being alive is) to escape it. The only way to break out of it is, well, probably dying. And I’m too afraid to die so I guess for now this vicious circle will have to do. Pickles and milk forever. Hooray.

What bothers me, though, is that I’m always the one being dumped. Why is that? Why aren’t boys happy to stick with me for longer than a few months? Why am I always being left behind? Or maybe I’m too cowardly to break it off with them first. I’m never happy in relationships, not for long, at least. Give it three weeks tops and then I’m bored. But I stick around anyway, which is odd because I’m practically a professional at break ups, seeing as how I’ve gone through nineteen now. I think I’m too afraid to dump someone because I am too afraid of being alone. I need a companion, even if his addiction to cigarettes or his habit to scrape his teeth against his fork as he eats annoy me to no ends. I would rather be miserable with someone than lonely.

“Excuse me, I think you dropped this.” I turn around and see a hand holding out a dirty tissue that I must have absentmindedly dropped while sniffling away and hating the world. The first thing I want to say is, I hope you know you’re touching my boogers right now, but then I look at him and then oh my god and then I really look at him. He has umber brown hair and sun-colored eyes and amazing biceps and I already know what I am going to name our kids. Jack and Marilyn. I hope he likes them.

The way he looks at me reminds me of how my several of my ex-boyfriends have looked at me when they come to pick me up for dinner and see me wearing a stunning dress: Oh my holy hell, you are gorgeous, their eyes tell me. And that is what I think this man is trying to tell me now. But logic kicks in and I’m pretty sure he looks so stunned because I am hideously ugly and he must be wondering how I managed to crawl out from the deepest depths of the murky ocean. I don’t blame him. I’ve been avoiding a mirror all day. So I gingerly take the dirty tissue from him and say meekly, “Thank you.”

I turn my back to him so that I can spare him from my horrendous face and then I pay for my things. After the bagger eyes me weirdly as he stuffs my milk and pickles into a brown paper bag, I walk outside to my car. It’s raining but I just think, Oh good, a free shower, because I haven’t showered since Tuesday and now that I am convinced I have seen the man who will someday father my children, I feel really self conscious about being so dirty.

“Wait!” I hear someone call after me. I turn around and see the devilishly handsome man come jogging towards me. I don’t know what he wants and I feel scared because he is extremely out of my league and there is no way he wants to talk to me unless someone is pulling a really mean prank. And I know that I am way too gross to be seen, let alone spoken to. I try to find a way if I can hide behind my car, but it’s too late, he’s already here.

“Hi,” he breathes. It’s raining pretty hard now and his chocolate curls are plastered to his forehead in a way that makes me want to reach out and run my fingers through his hair, but I refrain from doing so because that would kind of make me seem like a crazy person.

“Hi,” I reply, trying to sound as sane as possible. Except nothing about this entire situation is really sane, because we’re both gaping at each other in the pouring rain while freezing our asses off and everyone in the parking lot is staring at us. But I don’t really notice, and I don’t think he does either.

“Oh, um,” he clears his throat nervously and frowns slightly, and I can tell he’s suddenly gotten a hold of his senses, “I’m Liam Berkshire.” He sticks out his hand and I place mine in his. I can’t help but stare at how little my hand is compared to his and I think oh my god he is touching me.

“Elle Crestfield. It’s nice to meet you.” I’m surprised I’m capable of forming coherent words at this point.

And then the impossible happens. “Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?”

A million reasons to say no flash through my mind: I have ice cream to eat, I’ll be crying, I’ll be out of town for the next few months on a business trip even though I happen to be unemployed. At first I am confused as to why my instinct was screaming NO! and then I realize it is because today should be the day that I change. Today is the day that I should not jump into a relationship because I am tired of being crushed and I am tired of being thrown out like an old toy. But since I am profoundly retarded I say, “Yes, I would love to.” I’ve been broken up with nineteen times – might as well make it twenty.

Then the usual phone number exchange and nervous laughing and see-you-at-seven shenanigans ensue and before I realize what just happened I am leaning against my car door with his seven digits scrawled on the dirty tissue I had been clutching in my hand this entire time. It’s now wet from the rain and the numbers are a little blurred but still readable. I hold the tissue up to the light and scrutinize it like one may do to see if a dollar bill is authentic. Boogers have never looked so wonderful in my life.

Then it dawns on me that all of that really happened and that this is real and maybe the vicious circle I live in isn’t so vicious after all. “This dirty tissue is a token of our love,” I announce and the entire parking lot stares at me but I don’t care, I can’t care, because secretly I know that something great is just beginning and nothing in this world can ruin my happiness.