Winning

First…hahaha I mad you think of Charlie Sheen, and if you didn't now you are.

This week I've been thinking about social media and breakups. In the past when we'd break up with someone the most we could do was to drive by their house or call and hang up hoping he wouldn't just so you could hear his voice on the answering machine.  Now there is Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and a million different ways to keep putting a hand in the fire and hurting ourselves.  Unlike drive bys and answering machines, online stalking is so much more anonymous. I don't know how relationships work in this new digital age, it seems so much more painful than what we used to go through, can you ever really disconnect completely from your past?

Mindy and I had a long overdue breakfast and, as happens with close friends, I cannot help but tell her the truth of what's going on. I try to hide it and pretend, but one look and the full stories spill out with I'm ok but not great, etc, blah, blah, blah.  She's knows the whole ins and outs of what B and I had been through to get together  and wanted to hear I was really ok now that he'd ended us so abruptly.

She's in a relationship but divorced a few years ago and, like we all do, made some mistakes. One of her mistakes will email her once a quarter or every six months to check in, he keeps trying to weasel his way back.  We talked about why she doesn't just ignore him and it clicked with me. By him reaching out and not her being the one to instigate, I pointed out that she's winning.  And that's what it is she wins the breakup. And that's why we don't block them, it's a staring contest, last one to blink wins.  And by not blocking them we can keep that line out there and keep tempting ourselves again and again.  I have a couple of those mistakes in my past too and it is beyond tempting to reach out but then again I don't want to be the one who blinks.

B and I weren't friends on FB, but we have people in common, he's popped up here and there on comments and as a FB friend suggestion, but I don't  pull the trigger, I don't block him-not sure that would stop me from seeing his comment on a mutual friend's post, but I can't do it. I haven't gone and searched him either.  And yet as I’m typing this I can't help but wonder does he check up on me too? He originally encouraged me to blog and was my biggest cheerleader.  He knows it's out there but has he read the blog recently and seen my very public musings on getting my heart broken? Does he feel horrible even though he fell in love with Candi with a fucking i? Why do I even care? It's because I'm keeping score in my heart and I'm not the one winning, at least not yet.  And that's the thing I have an issue with, I want this to be done, I want to be past all of this, I want this to be finished. Like B, I want to have moved on.  And that stops me from being here today, like a petulant child wishing away every day so I can be grown up, I'm wishing today away.

I just read a post from Daily Zen: Loving the present moment isn’t complicated. In fact, it’s remarkably simple. The issue is that we’ve been conditioned to do everything the hard way. We take the path of least resistance, which is, ironically, the most difficult path. The path with the fewest obstacles is the least valuable path. It doesn’t teach us anything. It’s easy to make peace the present moment when there aren’t any obstacles in your way. It’s more difficult to do when you experience obstacles, and when you perceive obstacles as problems. If we can make peace with the present even when it’s testing our patience, we can exist in peace under any circumstance. (http://www.thedailyzen.org/2015/10/10/how-to-love-where-you-are/)