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For all those who are wondering…

What’s with all the new social media?

Last week, I went to NY and met some amazing literary agents, one of whom will hopefully end up helping me with turning this blog into a FULL-LENGTH BOOK! 

On my recent trip, though, I was reminded just what a huge part you (my readers) have played and continue to play in The Breakup Blog’s success! That being said, I want to hear from you! Any advice, any questions, anything you hope to see or hear about in the book, LET ME KNOW!

I am now on Facebook and Twitter and will be making some fun changes to this blog complete with more stories, breakup content, and resources. More than ever, I need you guys to help the Breakup Blog grow and reach other dumpees and love-ravaged souls. Please join in the Breakup Blog revolution and follow me:

Facebook

-and-

Twitter

xoxo thebreakupblogger

Now what?

Today it dawned on me that over the past several months, I’ve spent a lot of time talking about the “getting over him” process, but very little about what comes after it. Maybe because I don’t feel like I’m there so I just haven’t added anything else to my agenda. The more I think about it, though, the more I realize that maybe there really isn’t a “there.” And if I wait for this elusive “there,” then I’m likely to be finding myself looking for my denchers after sex and not just my panties.

Not to say that I’ve been holed up in my bedroom eating Lean Cuisines this whole time, sobbing into my bedsheets. That only lasted for the first couple months. I’ve been plenty busy and I’ve dated and broken up and had more than a few nights *ahem* sowing my oats around the greater Los Angeles area.

But opening yourself to someone new, being vulnerable again, after you’ve had your heart torn in half then ground into the pavement until it has morphed into a fine dust, well that takes guts. Because two years ago or not, I still remember the tears and the pain of laying in bed not wanting to move and I promised myself I’d never let myself feel that way again.

And then I remember the most vulnerable characteristic I possess— the fact that I’m a human being. And at the end of the day, we just wanna be loved. And love.

So what comes next? I guess after all the debris settles from the last love-induced leap, all that’s left to do is walk right up to the next cliff and toe the edge. To open your arms wide, hope for the best, and let yourself fall.

Ignoring Your Inner Psycho-Child

It has been 647 days or 1 year, 9 months, and 9 days since I took to the internet to share my every OCD, homicidal, self-piteous feeling after my breakup with my ex. I know this because I just used a website to calculate this, which evoked a mix of emotions, not the least of which was shame that I still scan Facebook on a nearly weekly basis for traces of him.

But something has changed because when I come across proof that he does still exist— a smiling picture here and there of him and his girlfriend, his new business’ website, and even Youtube videos— two emotions sweep over me and neither of them is longing. Honestly, I can only explain my continued digital hunt as a bad habit, a tic of sorts, something to occupy my time while avoiding looking for a grown-up job that will utilize my degree.

You see, I don’t fucking miss him anymore. I really don’t. I’ll admit I am at once jealous of his new life without me and of his happiness, but more than that I am RELIEVED. Because I have changed— all those terrible qualities he used to accuse me of, I have,for the most part, grown out of— and when I see his arrogant grin smiling out from pictures, I know he hasn’t.

It may have taken me nearly two years to get here, but I have finally reached a point where I can say I DON’T want him back. I mean, if it wouldn’t be so insanely weird I’d probably climb to the top of the Hollywood Hills and proclaim this fact to the world because it has taken for-fucking-ever, but in an effort to appear sane, I’ll just share it here.

In these past two years, reading feedback and even hearing it in person from friends, I have come to the realization that most people, if not all, will experience at least one relationship that will send them barreling toward the edge of Crazyville and if they are lucky, the best they can hope for is for it to be a short trip.

But for many of us who experience that long journey of clawing our way back to join the rest of humanity, there is that lingering nutcase that remains hiding inside of us. The psycho-child who you hide from future boyfriends or girlfriends and even close friends that secretly continues to look him or her up online or holds onto pictures of the two of you and insists that you still miss him or her. The psycho-child that quietly insists that if he came running back to you, you’d drop everything and be with him.

Well, I’m here to tell you, ignore the psycho-child. Unless of course you want to be miserable, in which case, I guess go for it? Because two years out, it’s pretty unlikely that you really truly miss him or her. I sure as hell know I don’t. I miss a thought, a feeling. That intensity you get when you fall in love as hard as you must to end up as heartbroken as you do in the end.

But him? Hell no, I don’t miss him at all.

A personal ad for the ages…

Over the past few months, I’ve had a few minor run-ins with members of the male persuasion which have made me think that, though my ex exacerbated these negative tendencies, I’m probably a little crazy, immature, and/or neurotic all on my own. I mean, I, of course, no longer stalk my ex or any new guys for that matter, but I’ve caught myself more than once stubbornly needing to get my way with a guy or working myself into a frenzy over a boy that didn’t call me back. Frankly, despite growing up immensely over the past couple years, certain habits may just be too hard to kill.

And as this realization popped into my head while driving with the windows down on a sunny afternoon a few days ago, I burst out laughing to myself illiciting a weird look from the guy in the car next to me. Because whoever decides to love me and (gasp) even deigns to marry me, is going to have his hands full. I am going to be the craziest, most difficult, most loving and beautiful partner ever. And he is not just going to have to be ok with that— he’s going to have to love that about me.

So I came up with this personals ad that I think pretty much sums it up:

Single, mixed race female. 25-years old, but vacillates between acting like a six-year old and a 75-year old. Will drive you up a wall with incessant chatter then turn around and need like a full weekend to myself.

Will throw temper tantrums when you ignore my texts for more than an hour, but will fold your laundry and even match up your socks.

Can’t cook, but will order your favorite takout and put it on a plate and make it look really pretty. Hates to clean, but loves to leave you little notes reminding you how cool I think you are. Will sit on the beach for hours while you surf or listen to you play the only song you know on your guitar and insist you sound good even when you keep screwing it up.

Driven, but prone to moments of extreme laziness. I will whine and mope and be extremely emotional then turn around and be the most rational person ever. I’ll give you great advice or just listen when you need to vent.

I will snore in your ear until you want to suffocate me with a pillow, but I will wake you up with the most insane morning sex. I’ll leave a mess of clothes, but only because I will be looking for the perfect outfit to wear to dinner with you and I’ll always clean it up eventually.

I will drive you up a wall, make you want to strangle me. But I will love you with every single tiny insignificant part of me. I will love you for all that you are, not just for who you could be. Most of all, I will be a better person because I love you and you me.

If you can handle all that, let’s party.

Love Made Me Crazy- The Book…dun dun dunnnn!

For all of you amazing readers who said that you would read whatever I write, hopefully you mean it! Despite being incredibly emotionally draining, scary, and HARD, I am finally sitting down to turn this blog into a full-length book, Love Made Me Crazy. (Still working on a tagline and am totally taking suggestions! ;) )

You can read the intro below and follow my progress at my brand-spanking new website:

                                                www.kelliewagner.com

I am suspended in the air, ten feet above the ground at least. The lacy slip tucked beneath my dress is entangled with the grimy chain link fence that is keeping me, for the moment, from making face-to-face contact with the concrete below me.

How did I get here, you ask? Well, simply put, love made me do it.

The kind of love-sickness that leads to an otherwise normal 23-year old girl being stuck atop her ex-boyfriend’’s fence at 2:30 AM doesn’t just happen overnight. It takes years of cultivation, —a certain kind of hunger fed by years of denial of the one thing that we all come out of the womb longing for— love.  

Therefore, this story doesn’t take place on the day that I first caught a glimpse of him heaving his suitcase out of the back of his black pickup truck, his chiseled frame apparent, even under the business casual attire that seemed unbearably oppressive in the summer heat. 

This story begins 16 years before that when, at the tender age of seven, I lost the first love of my life.

                                                          ——

I can’t recall if it was the persistent glow of the numbers reading 5:00 AM on the bedside table or the piercing sob of a mother’’s realization that she has failed to protect her daughter from the inevitable that broke through the fog of my sleep that morning. The senses blur together and form a sensational recollection that I cannot name, yet has stuck with me all these years. Without knowing why or how, I knew that my world was about to change.

Years later, my aunt would say that sometimes too much damage has been done for healing to ever take place, a statement that would ring true years later in my relationship as well. But before the love lost and the fucking and the fighting, it was the case with my mom, when after three weeks of a steady recovery from an aneurism, she succumbed to another series of strokes and was pronounced dead at 1:05 AM. She was 26.

xoxo thebreakupblogger

Acceptance/ Your Long-Awaited Update

According to the Kubler-Ross model, there are five stages of grief and loss: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Usually, this process is referred to when dealing with a death, but I have experienced every single one of those emotions since the breakup that spawned this blog nearly a year and a half ago.

I have denied the reality of our split, showing up at his doorstep at all hours of the night and insisting that we are still a couple whether he likes it or not, damn it. I have angrily dialed him and ranted on his voicemail about what a jerk he was and how he treated me horribly and can we please get back together before I die from the pain?

And when the bursts of anger did nothing to get him back or to even make me feel better, I bargained. I bargained with him, I bargained with myself. I’d chide myself to “get your shit together,” and be the perfect girl that he couldn’t bear to live without. I quit drinking so he’d see how much I was willing to sacrifice to be with him. I even bargained with the universe. If I pay my parking tickets, will you please bring him back to me? I suppose I can blame the five delinquent tickets that remain on my record for my continued single status.

Then there was the depression, a stage I thought would never end. It was the longest stage and I blamed myself for not being able to pull myself together and get over him. Sometimes it would ebb, give up a little, and I’d think I was coming out of it. I’d go on a promising date or get excited about things going on in my life, like graduating college.

And then I’d get a glimpse online or hear a snippet from a mutual friend of what he was doing and I’d spiral right back down. I had a reader tell me once that when I saw him down the road with someone new, it would be like we were breaking up all over again. I scoffed and insisted he’d never settle down. It wasn’t in him. And then he did. And fuck, she was right. How could he be so happy when I was still so miserable? How was he fine- scratch that- better than fine and experiencing all the successes he’d ever wanted, while I was floundering, alone and directionless?

But eventually you get busy. And you meet people who make you laugh and you go a day or two without obsessing. You forget to worry about him or compare all his successes to all the shortcomings you are feeling in your own life. And that’s when you get to acceptance.

I haven’t written in a while and I realize that the further I get from the relationship, the harder it is to give him my time, my thoughts. To get to acceptance, and believe me I waver between acceptance and regressing to depression on a pretty regular basis, I’ve had to distract myself. To not let myself think about him or what he’s doing. That can get pretty hard when you’re writing about the person.

But I love the people who read this blog. Every comment, every “like,” every new person that follows my story and lives every emotion I have felt for the past year or so, inspires me to come back here. So for the people who have wondered aloud where I am all this time later, this is what acceptance is like for me:

I have my good days and unfortunately some bad ones thrown in there as well. A good day is when I don’t think of him at all. I like those days, but I usually don’t get to celebrate their existence till he pops into my head and I realize it has been days since the last time I thought of him.

And then there are the bad days. There’s fewer and fewer of them, but that almost makes them worse. They are the days when I look up his new girlfriend’s Facebook page to see if her profile picture still shows him dipping her romantically in Prague. The days when I check his old work website to see if he’s still toiling away at the job he used to complain to me about. I look to see if he’s left it like he kept saying he would. Those days, I can lose hours searching the internet for clues, almost as if to see if he still exists. When I am exhausted by the dead ends, I succumb to depression.

Most days, though, he’ll pop into my head for a minute or so, triggered by a song or an article in a magazine, until I can successfully shake him out, distracting myself with loud music or mindless chatter with a friend. Sometimes, I want to email him, share a funny story with him or recommend a movie I’ve seen. I don’t. I know all too well how easily an ok day can turn into a bad one.

But all ll in all, I guess shit isn’t so bad. I haven’t hopped a fence in over a year. I smile more than I cry. And I’m pretty sure I can make it through The Notebook without breaking down into sobs, although I’m gonna hold off on proving that theory for the moment.

I have to admit though, those black pickup trucks? Well, they still make my heart sink.