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.