A New Year, A New Day

Happy 2011, blog readers. It's a new day.

I went to get my hair dyed yesterday. I took someone else's cancellation and got in to see a master stylist at an upscale salon. I was therefore shocked to find her a chain smoking, redneck-talking hick. But she was magnificent.

"Sister!" she said, "you need a good hairdo for New Year's Eve! You gonna go out and party? Lemme' just tell you about the time I ran into my ex at a party!! Why, I was out at a bar in Lake of the Ozarks. My parents had brought their RV down there and we were all just hangin' out. Well, I hadn't seen that bastard in 15 years, since he broke off our engagement! Suddenly, I feel a tap, tap, tap on my shoulder and BAM! there he is! I'da recognized him anywhere."

"What did you do, Renee?" I asked her.

"Well, I'd had a few to drink already. So I yelled, 'You broke my heart!' And then I ran to the bathroom and took a Xanax. Oh yes I did! And then I cried all night, Sister. That shit's hard to get over."

It is, indeed. That shit is HARD to get over. And no matter how you plan for it or prepare for it, you are never planned or prepared enough for the eventuality.

Last night, I went to a New Year's Eve party, with my newly minted boyfriend. It was weird being someone's significant other again. It was weird hearing people ask us to pose for pictures and tell them how we met. It was weird seeing these pictures turn up on facebook within a matter of hours. I thought, "Wait. Why am I in pictures with this man?"

Nothing was quite so weird as seeing Max's picture turn up on facebook with his new girlfriend/fiancee/wife (I don't know which).

I want to be "normal." I want to be okay. I want to be like Allison, whose boyfriend of 4 years dumped her and then introduced her to his new girlfriend before the year was up. And she was okay with it! I saw her cry one time, the night Z. first broke up with her. And then after that, she bounced back, she was fine. She talked to the new girlfriend, she talked to Z., she wasn't fazed.

Why can't I be like that? When I see Max pictured with someone else, I think, "WHAT!? Max's supposed to be GAY!!!! That was the only valid excuse for someone breaking up with me! What happened to that plan!?"

But now, finally, after years of crying, there is a little, teeny tiny voice in my head. It sounds a lot like trailer park Renee. "Sister," it says. "It's your choice to be devastated. It was a chapter in your life. It didn't work out. Do you wanna spend the rest of your life bitching about a guy who didn't want you?"

"No," I admit to the voice glumly. "I don't want Max to have that power over me anymore... but I really loved him. How do you move on, when you made a commitment to someone?"

"You show Grace, sister. You realize that he was young and stupid and he shouldn't have asked you to marry him if he didn't mean it. And then you let go."