2005-05-08 - 7:49 p.m.
Alithea broke up with me one year ago today. Although I did sort of pick the exact timing. Things really seemed like they were falling apart. She had basically gone out with a good friend of mine. It was the kind of thing where if either of them had just told me they were going to dinner, I wouldn�t have thought anything of it. But instead I found out from reading an email she had left open. He was an overly dramatic kind of guy and it was all secretive: �we have to hide this from him�. I know they didn�t actually have an affair, but it was couched in the language of an affair.
At first, I thought it was like karma. This is what I find out for reading someone else�s email. But then I recalled a lesson I had gleaned from my old roommate about the relative wrongness of poking around his comic book collection vs. having a dead squirrel in the attic. Yes, it was wrong of me to read her email, even if she�d left it open. But it was far, far more wrong of her to go out with my friend in secret right after I�d taken her to San Francisco! God.
I was absolutely devastated. I knew we were having serious problems and this was only the culmination. I asked her to just lay it out flat. Were we at all sustainable? She asked if I wouldn�t rather wait a couple weeks until after my finals, but I said I couldn�t concentrate anyway, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Okay fine then, she said. She�d thought it through and she didn�t see any way for us to continue. That was that.
I managed to ask for extensions on my remaining term papers. There were a few horrible, traumatic weeks where we still lived together and sometimes slept in the same bed. We didn�t know quite how to live without each other. Sometimes we spent all our time together and sometimes we avoided each other like the plague.
I remember sitting in the sun in the Kelleher Rose Garden in the Fenway across from our apartment (for those who don�t know, the Fenway � a.k.a. the Back Bay Fens � is a beautiful public park, part of Frederick Law Olmstead�s �Emerald Necklace�; the nearby baseball field takes its name from there) with Alithea�s head in my lap and thinking if I could just make this feeling last forever somehow, life would be perfect. I kind of wanted to marry her, or at least propose, in the Rose Garden, but after a year of living together, it�s about time to put up or shut up. I guess we actually made it about a year before shutting up.
I�d already rented a super-cheap bedroom in Providence�s Federal Hill for only the month of May with the original intent of having a quiet (and pretty unfurnished) space to go to study for finals. Now I stayed there just to avoid the sadness of our home. She slept at her parents place in the �burbs a lot. By early June she had moved out entirely and I�d moved near Brown full-time (where, doubtless in part due to the stress, I shortly declined physically a lot). I sublet our apartment for the rest of the summer.
In retrospect, it�s probably best that it happened when it did. We had had a good run and now I can only wish her the best. She was starting law school in the fall (I do sort of wonder how that�s going) and I know plenty of people whose relationships, marriages even, break up under the stress of the first year. You�re supposed to be basically married to law school while you�re there and not really have much of a social life, although she managed to start dating someone new within a few months (she said he wasn�t really into music, which I find incomprehensible).
So I�d been saving a few text messages I sent her over the summer and fall, I think to remind myself of my emotional progression. But for months now, they�ve just been somewhat pointless relics of a time long past that I�ve just been unwilling to erase because I�m kind of a pack rat. I�ve also had a few voicemails from her that I used to listen to to remind me that I had been someone who someone cared about.
When I said that hearing her voice used to make me cry, these messages are part of what I meant. But they also lost their purpose months ago. I�ve come to realize that I am someone worth caring about. I mean, I care about me. Other people seem to think I�m kind of cool. Maybe I am. I still get dates and one of them even kissed me. I am someone.
So here they are. I�m erasing them after I write this. Text messages first. I don�t think most of these really need any explanatory gloss. No doubt some will recognize my progression through the five stages of grief (denial, anger, Curly, Sneezy, and Doc):
Help
Sent: 8:21AM 06/10
I�m going to sleep soon, but thinking of u reading in yr own space makes me so happy. I�m so so proud. I dunno if I hv a right to be, but I am. U rule.
Sent: 7:43PM 08/29
Just went to Mainelli�s. So old-school, founded 1935. Red sauce, lousy food. They don�t make em like that anymore, thank God. I miss good food out with you :( how was [law school] orientation?
Sent: 5:32PM 09/03
Our first date was 10-24-98. Tomorrow by date, but it was a Saturday. Call please if you want. A long time ago, I know. The loft bldg was torn down, the dim sum closed.
Sent: 2:45PM 10/23
This one is from when I went to meet her for lunch for the first time in months. She had never seen me so disabled before and I was really nervous about being seen. I was supposed to meet her at noon, but my bus from Providence came in late and it took me a while to find a cab to Harvard Square at South Station. She started calling immediately and leaving irate messages about how I was always late. What I texted her:
Noon now by my phone. Been nervous for days, could barely walk. Come up here, quite a trip for me. You lay into me before we even meet. Please say it�ll be okay.
Sent: 12:11PM 11/20
And her reply:
It will be ok
Sent: 12:12PM 11/20
She was more right than she knew. It took a while, but it has been okay. Who would�ve thunk?
Then we have the voicemails. These are even older, ranging from maybe 1�-2� years ago (the exact date they were sent doesn�t get recorded). Alithea used to leave me a lot of similar messages and I first kept these because I thought they were particularly cute. While they served a function for a long time, they�ve long since gotten stale and disconnected from their original purpose. They�re just floating relics, touching reminders of a past that�s long gone. She uses the little kid voice we sometimes talked to each other in for this first one:
Hi Geoff, this is Alithea. I guess you�re not in right now. I just wanted to say that I love you more than milkshakes and� and pie combined and that you are a person of very high quality. I hope to hear from you soon. Bye!
I think this one is from when she was in Germany (spring 2003?):
Hi Geoff, this is Alithea. I just wanted you to know that I love you very, very much and I wanted to talk to you. And I hope that everything is going well. And I hope that your papers are very good and you should remember that you�re very smart and that you can do all of this stuff as long as you have some sleep and the love of a good woman, which you do. When you are less busy, I would appreciate a call back. Thank you. Bye!
This one is sung to a tune which was sort of my theme song from her. A slightly slower take on Tom Jones� �What�s New, Pussycat?� (it was usually �what�s new, mushyface � whoah, whoah, whoh-o!�, but this is a variant). This is obviously from when we lived together, probably around February 2004:
Hey there, mushyface � are you coming ho-ome? Or are you mushyface leaving me alo-one?
I think I�m actually going to hold on to these voicemails for a week or so to see if I can figure out a way to forward them to be recorded as MP3s or something. Like I said, I�m kind of a pack rat, and that way they can be tucked away uselessly to be listened to never or in 20 years or something. Let me know (via the email link to the left) if you know how to effect this.
And happy Mothers Day.
� 2005 Geoff Gladstone
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