Ex Doesn’t Always Mark the Spot
There is one question every girl will have to ask herself at one point—“Should I get back together with my ex.”
"You may have ended on good terms, you might still be friends, or you might have hated his very existence. I was never really upset at him for what he did. I was shocked, but I was never upset."
The last six months had been OK, but not great. There was always this distance between us even when we were right next to each other. I never wanted to push or force him to call or text, but I did want to be important to him. He was important to me. Then, there it was; 8 AM in the morning and the words I had waited stared at me on my cell phone screen: IN A RELATIONSHIP. I was so excited! It seems so stupid to become Facebook official but it is slightly deeper than that. It’s a public declaration someone is making that they want to be yours; that you are significant in this fake life they portray online. My brain was running so fast, I missed one tiny yet HUGE thing. He wasn’t in a relationship with me, but with someone else. This amazing guy I had dated for the last six months, bragged to all my friends about, this amazing guy that rescued me at bars when I was too drunk to drive home, this amazing guy that I adored… had completely blindsided me and got in a relationship with someone I had never even heard of.
Oddly, I wasn’t upset. I mean, yeah, it sucked that this guy I cared about so easily could lie and throw away our relationship, but I wasn’t heartbroken. I had been through this before and kind of summed it up to another one bites the dust.
The next couple of months I would (drunkenly) text him to put some feelers out there. I never got a response. And one day, after a few drinks with my girlfriends we had all dared each other to text our exes (side note: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME). The next day he texted back. Shockingly, he wanted to meet for drinks and talk. So I got dressed in the cutest, sexiest, you-are-an-idiot-for-dumping-me outfit and met him at the bar. I walked in and saw him sitting at the bar. I got butterflies. Six months later, and he still gave me butterflies. We awkwardly hugged and I immediately motioned for alcohol. After a few minutes of pleasantries and silent eye contact, he looked at me and said “I just want to formally apologize for the way things went down. I was a dick and you didn’t deserve that.”
Hearing words like that is music to a woman’s ears. He might as well have had a neon sign hanging above his head that flashed “I’m wrong” while it rang on a loud speaker. We talked about it for a few more minutes and before I knew it, we were back to normal. Laughing, having deep conversations—it was like the last six months had been erased and we were back to being us.
The next day I woke up and it seemed like a dream. A wine-hazed dream. And not the good kind. The kind of dream you saw in Inception where you think you are living happily and then the walls start moving, buildings blow up in slow motion, and Leonardo DiCaprio jumps out looking sexy in a suit only to tell you this is a dream.
I laid in bed and thought about what just happened, and two words rang in my head. He said something like “blah blah blah second chance.” Second chance?! Did I hear that right or was that the wine talking?
And was I actually thinking about it? Getting back together with someone who was the definition of a dick?!
After all this time, I still adored him. Part of me wanted to tell him “snooze, you lose” and the other part of me still got butterflies when I walked into that bar.
I can’t tell you whether you should get back together with an ex or not. I can’t even answer that question! But I can say, that for some reason, there are people in your life that will never leave you. The ones that you wake up next to and think I can’t believe I am here. The ones that make you laugh at the stupid things, the ones that you have insane chemistry no matter how much time has passed, the ones you don’t care about kissing with morning breath or the ones you”ll tip toe around his seemingly tornado-hit-apartment in the middle of the night. Those people will never leave you. And you will have to make the decision on whether you can allow them back into your heart again. It won’t be easy, but it can be done.
Sometimes hurt is part of the process. A casualty of war so to speak. The act wasn’t malicious but you still get hurt. My heart still adores him, but it also still feels the sting of him really hurting me. I keep asking myself: Why me? Why now? Why did it take you seeing another girl to really see me? I am a strong woman and know what I have to offer, but that still doesn’t help the fact that I still adore him and contemplate giving him another chance.
You can try and settle the butterflies, but sometimes the more you ignore them the bigger their wings get.
