Tuesday morning, after another sleepless night, I only thought for a minute or two before sending Anna an email claiming my cold had worsened so I still couldn't come in. I knew that the longer I stayed home the more likely it was that everyone at work would realize I was hiding from the Alex situation, but I couldn't make myself care. The thought of running into him was unbearable.
Since I hadn't found anything useful in my online and in-apartment stalking on Monday, I spent Tuesday typing everything I could remember from the last few months into what eventually became a fifty-page Word file. There had to be something. I'd done something.
When I collapsed in tears after a few hours of fruitless recollection, I had a shock of awful realization.
No, there did not have to be something. Maybe it wasn't what I'd done, it was who I was. If he just didn't want me any more, then nothing I could do would change it.
I forced that thought away the second it hit me, refusing to allow it to take root. Not an option. He had loved me. He would love me again. I would find the key.
Wednesday, I told Anna that I would let her know when I felt well enough to come back and promised I would start working from home. I didn't promise how much, though, so I set aside an hour morning and afternoon for work then spent the rest of the time thinking and analyzing the Word file I'd made, though I was often crying too hard to read it.
Two friends called and left messages that afternoon, since I didn't answer the phone, offering to come over and keep me company. Sweet of them, but I couldn't imagine having to talk to anyone so I sent text messages and claimed to feel better on my own. They made me promise I'd let them know if I needed anything, and I promised even though I knew I wouldn't. The only thing I needed was the answer to what I'd done wrong, and they couldn't give me that. I had to find it myself.
Every aspect of my life had been built on Alex. He was my first and only kiss and boyfriend and lover, my best friend and confidant, and without him I felt like the core of my life was gone and the weak outer shell was far too shaky to stand alone. I was too shaky to stand alone.
I would get him back. I had to.
But I couldn't figure out how, because he wouldn't talk to me. I'd kept myself from trying to contact him on Monday and Tuesday, but on Wednesday I'd realized that I'd only managed that by assuming he would contact me, even if just to see if I was okay. He hadn't, and maybe wouldn't, so I did. Over the next few days I reached out in every way I could find: I sent him text messages, phoned him, emailed, mentioned him on Twitter. By Friday I was ready to send him a carrier pigeon, because nothing else had worked. He'd cut me out of his life completely.
But the difference was, where I had an empty core, he had the new woman, about whom I knew nothing. My earlier 'I'm better off not knowing' attitude had worn off and I was desperate to find out what she had that I didn't. Because if I knew I could get it and then get him back.
After the week at home, and a weekend spent re-analyzing everything I'd found that might give me a hint about her, I didn't even consider going in to work on Monday. My poor eyes were so red and swollen from the still-constant crying fits that I'd never be able to make myself look decent, and I couldn't face the unfeeling crowds on the subway and the faked sympathy of my coworkers and bosses.
The second week passed much like the first. I didn't cry quite as much, but that only gave me more time to obsess and analyze. I found nothing about her, and next to nothing about him, but I couldn't give up. I slept a little more, sheer exhaustion taking me over, and my work ethic began to make me feel guilty so I began spending more time on my job, but every free moment still went to the desperate struggle to find an answer.
As my third week of unproductive hermitage neared its end, I realized to my surprise that I could continue like this indefinitely. Since I'd often worked from home two or three days a week, Anna and Gary seemed to be all right with my never coming into the office. We talked on the phone and over email whenever they needed me, and as if by mutual consent we never mentioned Alex. It looked like I could keep working from home at my current pathetic pace until I retired. Only thirty-seven years to go.
Things were stabilizing on a personal level too. The messages, which I'd continued to ignore, had peaked in the second week but now there were hardly any new ones. People had moved on, back to their own crises, and Alex and I were no longer of interest.
He was still of supreme interest to me, though. I was briefly certain that he regretted leaving me, based on the 'so shouldn't have done that' message he posted on Twitter early in the third week. Though that later turned out to be a reference to a burrito-eating contest, I still felt sure he also harbored regrets over what he'd done to me. How could he not?
I knew I wasn't supposed to obsess over my cheating ex. The right response, as I'd learned from years of watching romantic comedies, was to go out and find a new man, preferably either the ex's best friend or his arch rival, or both, until the ex smartened up and came back. But Alex's best friend was married with four kids, and he didn't have a rival that I knew of, and I didn't want a new man anyhow. Though I hated myself for being so weak, I wanted Alex and I would figure out what I needed to do to make that happen.
I hadn't gotten far, though, by Friday of my third week at home. Difficult to plan to fix your life when you don't know what you did wrong. I hadn't eaten much over those weeks, too busy crying and thinking, but I'd still finished all the food in the house, and as I sat awaiting the delivery of the pizza I'd eat for the next few days I again went through what little I'd discovered.
From the sounds of things, he was going to work and hanging out with his friends and doing all of his usual activities, just without me. How come his life was going on as normal and mine had stopped dead? Easier to be the dumper than the dumpee, I supposed.
The intercom buzzed and I let the pizza guy in. To my surprise, though, when he arrived at the apartment he wasn't the usual guy. Alex and I had been ordering pizza nearly every Friday night for the four years we'd been in this apartment and it had always been delivered by the same short round bald man. This guy was short too, but skinny with dreadlocks and a scraggly beard.
He handed me the pizza box and I said, "Where's the other guy?"
"Bob?"
I shrugged. "The usual guy. Short, bald..."
"Bob." He clutched at his chest, making a mock agonized face. "Heart attack."
My own heart skipped a beat. "Seriously? Is he okay?"
"He will be, they think. Not going to be around for a while, though." He shook his head. "He thought he just had an upset stomach, and he happened to ask at one of his deliveries if they had any antacid. The woman he asked was a nurse and she figured out what was wrong with him. From the sounds of it, if he'd driven off he probably would have died in the car."
"Wow."
"Yup. One tiny decision changes everything, eh? Anyhow, that'll be twenty-two fifty."
I paid, but I didn't eat. Instead, I sat on the couch and thought about what he'd said. One tiny decision. If Bob had handled that 'indigestion' differently, he'd be dead. At some point Alex had met her for the first time, and if he hadn't let himself meet her for the second and subsequent times we'd still be together. If I hadn't stayed home on that first day, I wouldn't have become the tragic recluse I now was. The most minuscule change could shake up every aspect of your life.
I needed to be my opposite.
I could do that, if I took every last one of those little decisions in life and flipped them around. I'd thought Alex and I were perfect together and I'd been wrong, so I clearly couldn't trust my intuition. So I'd do the exact opposite of what it told me. When I wanted to say no, I'd say yes. When I wanted less, I'd ask for more. When I wanted to wear a sweatshirt and jeans, I'd pick out a skirt and heels instead. I'd try everything I'd never tried before. I'd become a whole new person.
And then Alex would come home.
Chapter Four
I wasn't proud of how much I, a supposedly strong m
odern woman, wanted Alex back, but I couldn't help it. He'd been in my life forever and without him I felt weak, like half the oxygen had been sucked out of the air I was breathing: I could survive but I couldn't possibly thrive.
I picked up a slice of pizza, the same food I'd been eating every Friday night for years, and realized I hadn't been thriving for a long time. Alex and I had slipped into something not so much a rut as a mile-deep trench. I hadn't noticed since it had happened so gradually, but I could see it now and he must have seen it too. He'd clearly become bored with me. With us.
So. I would make changes, perk up my life, and then Alex would take me back and everything would be fine. Back to the way it was.
But what would I change first?
I ate my pizza and looked around the apartment, figuring a physical change might be easier than changing myself. I needed to do that too, but one step at a time.
Nothing jumped out at me in the living room, so once I'd finished eating I took my dishes to the kitchen then began touring the apartment in search of a place to begin. When I walked into the bedroom and tripped over the laundry hamper, as I did nearly every time I went in there, I knew my first change. We'd put the hamper right inside the door so it'd be easy to get the clothes out to do the laundry, but it partly blocked the doorway and constantly falling over it frustrated me. Time for it to move.
I tried various spots in the room and eventually tucked it into the closet. It could have gone in the empty section where Alex's clothes used to be, but instead I put it under my hanging dress shirts so it wouldn't be in Alex's way when he came home and unpacked. Lots of room for it on my side, and the few extra steps to fetch at laundry time wouldn't be that taxing.
Besides, I'd handled the laundry since we moved in together, so those steps would never have taxed him at all. Funny that I hadn't realized that before. I had been stumbling over the hamper, annoying myself, when I could have relocated it at any time.
As I turned to leave the room, I saw the place where the hamper had been, now open and no longer a hazard, and though it was a tiny and stupid change my shoulders relaxed and a little flutter of pleasure skipped through me. I'd made a change and it had made a difference. He and I had actually fought once about that ridiculous hamper, since I'd hated tripping over it, and now when he came back there'd be no reason to fight.
I left the room, then went in and out of it a few more times to enjoy the wide-open space again, then settled onto the couch to plan my next change. That one had been so small and yet it had made a significant difference. If I did something a little more major...
I didn't want to rearrange the bookshelves even though Alex taking his stuff away had left awkward empty gaps, because when he came back I'd want him to fit that stuff right back into those gaps. So it'd have to be something else.
The apartment was getting dark, though, which made it hard to find changes. I turned on a light, and familiar exasperation filled me.
Alex had chosen a dusky gray paint for the living room because he'd seen it in a magazine and thought it would look elegant. I'd agreed, and it did in fact look elegant in the magazine's sun-drenched pictures. But our apartment faced north and got hardly any sun. Turning lights on didn't add much warmth, so even brighter the room still felt cold and unwelcoming instead of elegant.
I could change that. I could make our living room inviting.
But what color to use?
My immediate reaction was to ask Alex for his opinion, but I grimaced and pushed that away. Kind of the point, not asking him. Not that I could.
I studied everything in the room, taking my time. The furniture's dark brown upholstery and the light oak hardwood floor looked nice with the gray paint. What else would suit them? A pale green, maybe. Or a light brown in the same kind of color as the furniture. Or I could splash out on a rich deep purple. A shock, but maybe a good one?
I didn't know. My chest tightened in frustration. I didn't know, and I had to know because if I couldn't even make this tiny change I had no hope of changing enough to get Alex back.
That thought forced me to my feet. The home improvement place down the road was open until nine, and it was barely eight o'clock. I would go get some paint and then spend the weekend refreshing the living room and revamping my life. I changed the fuzzy pants I'd put on after my morning shower for jeans then headed out, filled with a teeny spark of enthusiasm and an unreasonable amount of terror.
Once at the store, though, the enthusiasm flickered and died, leaving only the terror behind. The wall of paint chips loomed over me, taunting me. "You can't make a decision, can you? Not even something as simple as this. Pathetic."
It was pathetic but I couldn't. All the ideas I'd had at home now seemed ridiculous, and the huge variety of color choices paralyzed me.
The crowd paralyzed me even more. I would have assumed people would have better things to do on a Friday night than shop for home improvements but half the population of Toronto seemed crammed into the store and after being alone for weeks it was overwhelming. I was constantly bumped and pushed aside as I picked up and discarded sample cards over and over, making and breaking a thousand decisions, horrified at my inability to choose and my desperate desire to call someone, anyone, to make the decision for me.
Who could I call, though? Alex was obviously out, and I'd discovered to my sadness that many of the women I'd thought were my friends were actually our friends and Alex seemed to have custody of them. None of them had contacted me after the breakup and I hadn't bothered reaching out either. The few women who had offered me their company and support were possibilities, but I'd never responded and so couldn't imagine calling them now to say, "So, what color of paint should I get?"
I didn't want to anyhow. At twenty-eight years old, I had to be capable of picking paint.
Didn't I?
What was my favorite color anyhow? I couldn't even answer that. Alex had loved grays and browns, especially on me, and I'd gone along with it. My wardrobe was full of them. But now I wasn't sure that I'd ever liked them. I wasn't sure who I was any more.
A vibrant aqua blue? A washed-out yellow? Black, dull and lifeless?
Or wallpaper? Maybe I should--
No. The thought of trying to choose a pattern and color, of staying in the crowded store surrounded by people for that long, was too much to bear. It would have to be paint.
I scanned the paint chips until a soft pale purple caught my eye. After all the brown and gray in my life, purple would be a big change, and at the moment that was the closest to a decision that I could get. I had the store clerk mix me up the paint and fled.
I managed to get home before I burst into tears, but it was close. I'd known Alex and I had interwoven our lives to an amazing degree, of course, but how could we not have? We'd been together through nearly all of high school, all of university, and all the time since. But if someone had asked I'd have insisted I was still my own person, still an autonomous creature.
An autonomous creature crying over paint. An autonomous creature who didn't know her own favorite color.
I had to rebuild everything. I couldn't continue with what I had. Because I didn't have much of anything any more.
Chapter Five
After crying myself to sleep, I woke the next morning feeling more positive than I had since Alex had left. Okay, the paint choosing thing had been a bit of a disaster. More than a bit. But I had bought paint, and I'd even thought to pick up brushes and rollers. Sure, everything in my life had changed, and not by my choice, but I could still take control. I could put together a new life for myself. Better, stronger, more focused on what I liked and what mattered to me.
My self-pitying thoughts of the night before, my belief that I had nothing left, seemed silly in the light of the new day. Of course I had lots left. I had my job, and my clothes and books and CDs and DVDs. And...
Nothing else came to mind. I had physical things, but barely anything in the social realm. No real friends, no boyfriend, no f
amily nearby...
I started to feel down again but rather than let myself sink into the sadness I decided to paint. Knowing I should lay down newspaper and carefully tape off the baseboards and window frames first, I instead just got the furniture and a few hanging pictures out of the way and launched into it. Another reversal.
Tears filled my eyes when the first strokes of paint hit the wall. Alex had picked that color, and I was obliterating one of the few things he'd left behind. But I blinked hard and kept going, because I had to, and soon had one full wall covered.
Standing back and staring at it, I tried to decide if I liked it. More important, would Alex like it? I didn't want him to come home and hate what I'd done with the place. It was definitely a lighter and brighter color than before, far prettier, and much girlier. Did it work, though? I thought maybe, but I wasn't sure.
I'd never thought of myself as a particularly indecisive person but since Alex left I'd been the queen of the wafflers.
"Do you like your paint, your highness?" I said out loud, then laughed at myself, laughed for the first time in weeks. It felt good.
I gave the rest of the walls their first coat and then took a pizza break before applying the second coat. Finished, I went out for a walk to get a little paint-fume-free air. The day was cool for mid-June, and I walked fast to keep warm. When I returned home I felt a million times better, my body energized and my mind relaxed.
I opened the door, and the sight of the living room multiplied my mood by another million or so. The paint, which had appeared more blue when I left, glowed purple in the sunlight sneaking through the half-open window blinds, and the room felt bright and fresh and happy. More like the room in the magazine that had made Alex pick the gray paint. He would like this, I was almost sure of it.
I dropped onto the couch and looked around, feeling surprisingly proud of myself. I'd made a change and it was a good one. Small, but good. I was on the right track.
Toronto Collection Volume 1 (Toronto Series #1-5) Page 103