I hadn’t realized, until looking at my last few entries, how long it had been since I’ve written a post. The semester ended, I graduated (but I’ll have to retake a couple classes), and thus far I’m enjoying my summer (relatively). I can write more about that later, though.

My main interest in writing here, at the moment, is to mark the six months since my ex-girlfriend and I broke up. I think I’ve written about it here before- she wanted me to propose, and I didn’t want to marry her. While it’s possible I could have been more diplomatic and handled it better than I did, the fact remains that I didn’t want to marry her and we wanted different things.

This seems like as good a place as any to mention recent interaction with her, though there hasn’t been much of that.In the last couple weeks of the semester, I invited her out to lunch. I had wondered how we were going to handle payment, and I had figured I would pay for it before she said, while we were at the restaurant, that she’d pay because she might need me to take her out for her 21st birthday. I was not expecting this, but she said her boyfriend might not be able to visit the weekend of her birthday and she didn’t want to go to a bar, she just wanted an alcoholic milkshake from a local restaurant. Before she said she didn’t want to go to a bar I had entertained the mental image of going to a bar with her and walking back to her dorm room, which I thought was slightly amusing, particularly given our interactions since we broke up. The consensus from the friends and family I discussed it with was that I shouldn’t take her out for her birthday. I felt bad about the idea of her sitting alone in her dorm room on her birthday, but it ended up not even being an issue because her boyfriend did end up visiting that weekend, and I met a girl that I had started talking to on Tinder. My ex’s birthday was on Sunday this year, and my plans with the girl from Tinder had originally been to meet Saturday morning, but she texted me that day and said that she had woke up with a migraine and asked if it would be possible to reschedule, so we rescheduled for Sunday. I thought the meeting went well – I don’t think I embarrassed myself too much, I tried mimosas for the first time, and we were texting for a while, but a couple of weeks ago she didn’t reply to one of my texts, so I’m not sure if she “ghosted”, if I did (or if I didn’t seem interested enough), or if it was kind of mutual. She also didn’t text me for a while last month, and she had been busy with work, but since it’s been nearly three weeks, I suspect she’s either busy (I think she mentioned wanting to move this month or next month), maybe she’s found someone else, or maybe I didn’t seem interested enough. I don’t know that I was particularly interested, but perhaps I should have acted more interested in making plans to see Deadpool 2, as we both said we wanted to.

Anyway, as for my ex-girlfriend, she had asked me the week before her birthday to get her either Yoohoo or another package of diet cherry Dr. Pepper. Originally she had wanted to go to the store with me because she wanted cash and those drinks, but on a rainy Thursday she said she didn’t want to go to the store because I was going sometime soon anyway and she had too much to do on campus to waste time going to the store. There may have been more to that conversation- I do remember asking if her not wanting to go to the store was due to the weather. She might have also mentioned being tired, but I mainly remember her saying she had too much to do to waste time going to the store when I was going to the store and coming to campus anyway. She also asked me to get some boxes from my work so she could start packing up her stuff. I was amused by the idea of whatever family that helped her move out of the dorms (whether it was her dad, her mom, or her grandparents) seeing the boxes from my work and asking about me (you know, about five months after we broke up and four months after she got a new boyfriend).

She asked the Friday afternoon before her birthday if I was going to campus, and I had said no, but I could drop the stuff off Saturday. She informed me she wasn’t going to be around that weekend, which was when I learned her boyfriend was coming down. When I dropped the Dr. Pepper and boxes off at her dorm room the next Tuesday, she met me at the door, took the stuff from me, and waved me away with hardly a word. I had a counseling appointment in a few minutes, so I wasn’t expecting a long conversation, but I figured she could have been less abrupt. When I asked her later what the rush had been, she mentioned that she had been trying to take a nap, her roommate had been there, and that I had just barged in. Also, when she originally asked me to get the drinks, I’m pretty sure she mentioned she would pay me back, but when I said the Dr. Pepper had been $11 (or however much) she said that she had bought me lunch the week before, and asked if I was going to be an ass about it. Being an ass wasn’t my intention at all, but I thought she had said she would pay me back (as she always had in the past), and my theory was that she spent her cash when she spent the weekend with her boyfriend.

Later in the week, I asked if she wanted to go out to eat again. At first she said no, then she said yes, then she said no again. Without looking at my phone, I don’t remember exactly what she said, but I think she mentioned not feeling well, and I thought it was weird that she had changed her mind twice. I said I hoped she felt better, and we didn’t have any contact for about a month. I had only meant the invitation as being friendly, not some kind of nefarious, indirect attempt to get back together, and a friend I discussed it with thought that my invitation may have been misinterpreted. Last week, before I went to work Sunday afternoon I sent her a text asking “How are you?” She immediately replied “Fine”. A few hours later I sent her another text- possibly “That’s good” or something innocuous like that. She asked “Why are you talking to me?” about fifteen minutes later.  Monday evening (after I drove a couple hours for a camping trip and was waiting for my dinner at a small restaurant) I texted back that I was curious, because we hadn’t talked recently, and that recently going to a lake reminded me of when we had gone canoeing there and that I was camping in the same area as when we had gone on a break last August. She asked “Who are you with?” and I replied “Nobody- just myself”. I haven’t heard anything from her for a week now. I guess it does get easier with time- I know it would have been really hard to resist texting her shortly after we broke up (and it probably was, though I don’t remember exactly), but now that it’s been six months since we broke up, and particularly since we hadn’t talked for a month, it’s been all too easy to either resist the urge to text her (particularly when I doubt that she’ll be interested in talking to me) or not even have a desire to text her.

Originally, this was going to be an entry all about the breakup and the time since – how I don’t miss her being clingy, but I do miss cuddling and spending time together, for example. It’s occasionally weird to remember old routines, like having to be in constant communication by texting her all day, and the hours-long phone conversations we used to have during the summer breaks that usually were between like 1 AM and 5 AM. Particularly toward the end, I know I wasn’t always thrilled to “have” to spend so much time talking to her when I wanted to just unwind after work (for example). I don’t know anything about her daily routines now, but since she and her boyfriend are living in the same city (instead of 200 miles apart), I presume that they see each other at least several times a week, if not every single day. Other speculation about her life now, as opposed to when we were dating, might be interesting intellectually, but is ultimately futile, and I doubt she’ll enlighten me. There may be a time she tells me about her current relationship, but it probably wouldn’t be until a time that it might impact me, and it’s hard to think of a time when that might be. I don’t really want to “fade” and lose contact with her completely, but again, I return to that thought of how I’d like to be friends, but she doesn’t seem to want that. I remember her talking about cutting ties as soon as I returned her stuff after we broke up, and that didn’t quite happen, but I wonder if it will. I suspect she might reach out if she breaks up with her boyfriend (of course, there’s always the chance I’m wrong) and/or when she returns for the fall semester and wants help again, but it remains to be seen. I guess I’ll find out, and hopefully find someone else that I’m more compatible with.