The Exes

I dated a guy once who threatened to kill himself via a blog post.

He had disappeared for weeks on end; no one knew where he was. He had deserted his apartment, left his roommate with no clue what was happening. I lived in a different city, so I was only aware of what was going on through emails.

When I finally managed to reach him, he was (supposedly) in Portland, Oregon and had no idea how he had got there. His car was nowhere to be found and he thought he had taken the train. I managed to persuade him to call his parents, to go home to them, to find help. He finally went back home to Indiana; whether he got the mental help he needed--well, that's another story.

He would call me up to complain about how awful his parents were, how cloying and unempathetic they were. When I asked whether he had gone to see a psychiatrist, he got quiet, and then brought up a list of excuses: how will he pay for it, there are no good doctors around, etc etc. It became frustrating to talk to him. I started avoiding his calls. On one hand, I thought he needed me, but on the other hand, he had to get there himself.

He's much better now; he takes medication for migraines and he seems to think he's beyond the point of needing mental health counseling despite his compulsive lying and strange way of making himself into the victim.

After the break-ups of both of our relationships, he came to visit. We messed around, it was weird, I came down with the flu, and he left early. He kept talking about coming to visit, and I kept stalling for one reason or another. Although I never told him, I came to realize that it was becoming a cycle; now, he was complaining about living with his parents, being trapped in Indiana, and wanting to move somewhere else but always managing to think up a litany of excuses for why he couldn't. He was very adept at forming plenty of obstacles in his path that would keep him from ever doing anything. We would chat online and talk about Harry Potter, and it was all very boring and mundane.

And then he dropped the news that he was seeing someone. Some girl in Grand Rapids that he knew from a bar or his brother or something ridiculous and a combination of the two. When he said it, I was immediately irritated and affronted, even though there was no way that I wanted to be his girlfriend again. It wasn't jealousy; I certainly didn't want him. So what made me end the phone call so abruptly? Part of it is his ridiculous personality, this idea that he can so easily flit from one person to another, to focus his time on driving to see a girl but he can't drive out of Indiana to start a new life. The willingness to drop it into a conversation as though it's no big deal, whilst complaining about how awful his life is except for her. Maybe it's because he referred to her as his "lady-friend" (which I find so vomit-inducing). Maybe I'm partially jealous of the fact that someone who is mentally unhinged can easily find someone to date. Either way, it doesn't make sense to waste my time on this. It never makes sense to sit and stew over ex-boyfriends. While I'm on friendly terms with most of them, there are a few that, whatever stupid shit they say or do, will always make me grit my teeth. As G. says, "They're exes for a reason."