The Apple Store Doesn't Sell Lesbian Oranges

What makes or breaks a relationship? If you look back at the lineage of women your heart has loved and your mind has left, can you see a trend?  Maybe you’re the one who always leaves first or the one who always leaves last.  For me, it’s a combination.

Breakups that come out of nowhere are traumatic and require friend or professional therapy.  At the bare minimum, the ones that end too soon are startling and cause one to “wake up” to the reality that came around the corner and surged a 64 oz. Slurpee onto your chest.  Next, your senses are instantaneously invigorated like when you put on reading glasses that are 2.00+ the strength of your God-given sight.  You see the granular colors in your dog’s coat and the wrinkles that make erosion lines across your pores.  It’s cruel, I know, but we’re all getting older and there isn’t much time to wake up to reality.  So, this is how the benevolent Being(s) gets our attention.

When I went through my most recent breakup—yesterday—, you can imagine that I was startled.

  

Our love eased in slow and blurred the lines between platonicism and intimacy.  I didn’t see our bond occurring.  Sometimes friends turn to each other.  Looking back, I’m glad it happened.  If anticipated, I’d have been guarded and pushed off solace that got me through hard times, lonely times. 

Since I met her at the Verizon store, we’ve been inseparable. Each day starts with a click of her apptribute to check the weather.  On the way to work, I check for 2girls visitors who popped in overnight.  Many lunches ago, I introduced her to my Facebook friends.  Our relationship doesn’t stop there; we are together, near the crackling electronic fire, while Netflix movies fill empty evenings and until the expanding crow blows up and topples those damn laughing green pigs.  She is inches from me while my pores cry desperation tears, soaking the sheets, and my mind reminds me of a new girl that is to come, and then she sings of a new day with her alarming apptribute.

My brother commented, “What are you going to do next?”

“I don’t know.”  I stared at his question, feeling a huge hole under my rib cage. 

My sister’s childhood bestie commented, “How can that be?”

I stared at the screen before I admitted my rising guilt.”  I don’t know. The chemistry is gone.  I feel guilty because I’m just ‘using’ now.”

I’ve been used before, and I know how much it hurts.  I never thought of myself as one of those. When Ex#1 and I broke up, she wasn’t exactly ready. I felt a gap building between what I wanted to do with our time and what we would talk about.  I simply said, “This relationship is ending. We can fake it for two more years, or we can get through this amicably and get ready for someone new.”  I was much wiser then.  But getting older sometimes means losing touch with all the important stuff that was pointed out during Kindergarten or printed on large fanciful posters lining the walls of a tender life.  Now, I have to admit my weakness and find younger strengths because I, too, have become advantageous. 

A new friend chimed in, “You know, there’s a 12-step group called IDT (I Don’t Touch).”
It was sweet of her to offer. She put herself out there.  I know I need help.  I’ve allowed an innocent desire to become a time-eating addiction and, now, I can’t see my life without my best companion.  It’s time to admit that I’ve been using, hoping to fill animated holes inside of me.  What was I thinking? I don’t know how it got this bad.

“It is time,” an authoritative voice booms from the back of my mind. 

I need to recognize that there’s only so much she can give and weigh that against what I need.  It’s apples to oranges. I just pray I don’t use the first animate object that comes my way that way. 

Some Lagniappe for my Love Story

We all have a personalized narrative. It is what keeps us humming, what connects our thoughts, and explains what the hell is going on.  Seriously. Each one of us has a typist upstairs that is pumping out new material and causing one to contribute to the play of her life—, and all the while, explaining what the other actors are up to.  It’s what perpetuates the illusion that the Buddhists warn about; it’s what keeps each person tethered to the stage and to some semblance of a common plot. 

I am most aware of my story lines and voice over when I am driving or cooking.  I learned during the hunger games—college—that I needed to cook a big pot or tray of something nutritious once a week.  It was a means to find nourishment and live within my tight budget, $25/week.  Through feast and famine, I still try to make a nutritious something before the week starts. It's what allows vitamins to infiltrate my carbs: breads and beers.

When I’m chopping and cooking, my narrative comes out.  Tonight, I was mincing garlic for a dish that had been destined to be Creole with alligator sausage and smoked chicken. But standing in front of the pantry, I noticed that I had been hoarding various types of marinara.  So I channeled the Barefoot Contessa and made something-yummy-on-pasta. 

With the tip of the knife pushing into the yellow bell pepper, I am at that point when the narrative should start.  In the past, I've had images of sharing this subjectively important information with a girlfriend—as if she were in the room.  This time, I’m at a loss. I don’t hear anything. I feel the thickness of the dead air. At first, I assumed the typist was on a union-approved break, but I waited and nothing.  It should have begun to fill-in the blanks for, "this is what I’m up to" and "this is what it means."  

“I’ve got nothing to say to myself.”

I'm at a loss and it's a good thing. If a new girl were perched on a nearby stool, watching me cook, I wouldn’t be talking about the history of my cooking or what I learned to prep when I lived in Texas, Florida, Georgia, California, or Alabama. I certainly wouldn’t include details about the ingredients I used for Ex#1, #2, or #3.  Those memories have been cataloged with old recipes.  I’d be looking for material that is relevant to the moment.  If I were cooking, with a new girl, there’d be room for her.  We’d be talking about what we are doing during any next now, and what all of it could possibly mean—to me and she.

Clearly, I’ve managed through the necessary four seasons of solitude.  The time has allowed me to sort through most of the old stained cards and put them where they belong.  I’ve got a new recipe to build and a clean index card.  Now, I need to put on my hat and coat and to go to the market.  Only a lover's lagniappe can complete this, and she is the only ingredient that is missing.