BreakupBabe

by Rebecca Agiewich

  “What?” I said in a weak voice. I didn’t know if I could do anything. My body felt sapped of all energy.

  “Call your f*cking psychiatrist, okay?” General C. said. Loneliness and Anxiety looked at each other. Smirked.

  “Can he really help?” I whined. I was already on drugs! What more could he do besides throw me in the loony bin and forget about me?

  “Yes! He can help.”

  Suddenly, Loneliness and Boredom lunged at General C. But he was prepared. He smacked Boredom with the butt of his rifle, knocking him over, then ran out of my bedroom and out the front door. Loneliness and Anxiety ran after him.

  “Call him!” he yelled. I heard him tearing down the stairs.

  Surprising myself, I jumped out of bed and ran for the phone while Boredom was out cold. Who knew I still had so much life in me? It helped to remember that one of my dear readers—just a few days ago!—had suggested I do this very thing. I speed-dialed Dr. Melville’s number, left a desperate message, then threw on some clothes and fled the apartment while I still could.

  Then I walked all over town. In the unseasonably warm March weather, I roamed the streets filled with mansions on north Capitol Hill. Longed for the perfect lives that the inhabitants of such beautiful homes undoubtedly had. I walked down “Pill Hill,” past the hospitals, and tried not to see visions of myself in the psych ward. I walked all the way downtown and attempted to console myself by walking around Pike Place Market, where I had sold sheepskin slippers when I first moved to Seattle. What an innocent time that had been, when I still had hope that I could “succeed” in life, when I still thought love was possible!

  Sensing a meltdown, I walked faster as I headed up the steep hill toward home. Momentarily, the incline reminded me of the training hike I’d been on last weekend. I brightened ever so slightly when I remembered it. Three boys and me on Tiger Mountain and we hadn’t gotten lost! We had another training hike planned this weekend on Mount Si.

  But who was I kidding? Quickly, the fragment of happiness slid away. I would never make it up Mount Rainier! I was too afraid of heights. What if Anxiety tackled me while I was up there? What if we had to cross a steep section and I froze, caused the entire team to stall, or, even worse, to turn around?

  I walked even faster now, nearly running. I was in good shape from all of my recent workouts. But all I could think about were the things I wouldn’t be able to do if I didn’t get a grip: climb Mount Rainier, finish that damn book chapter that was due in four days and that I’d already gotten an extension on, fall in love with someone who was not a lying, cheating bastard, a flaky, “Little Nikki”–singing egomaniac, or a flight attendant–f*cking commitmentphobe!

  Oh God. I hurried up to my door so I wouldn’t start bawling on the street. When I got upstairs, fully prepared for the demons to devour me for good, I saw that my answering machine was flashing. Like a starving person falling on a piece of bread, I lunged toward it, pressed the button, and found two messages, both from doctors.

  Message #1: Rachel, it sounds like you need to come in for an appointment. I have an opening in my schedule on Friday at 3 P.M. Please let me know if that works for you.

  Message #2: Hey, there. Sorry I’ve been out of touch; I was in California for a few days for a conference. What are you doing Friday night? Want to hang out?

  E-mail Breakup Babe | Comments 5

  POST A COMMENT

  I’m glad you called your shrink. He’ll fix you right up.

  She-Devil | Homepage | 3/24/03–9:07 A.M.

  You’re not going to go out with The Doctor again, are you??

  The Girl from Maine | Homepage | 3/24/03–11:53 A.M.

  I have also been feeling like I might perish from loneliness and boredom! My boyfriend dumped me two months ago and I thought I would be over it by now but the hurt just goes on and on. Maybe it’s time for me to get on some antidepressants too!

  Sad Sadie | Homepage | 3/24/03–2:10 P.M.

  What has this society come to when, as soon as people have any problems, they go rushing to take drugs to fix them? Have you tried vitamins instead? I also notice there doesn’t seem to be much spirituality in your life. I suspect this is a big part of your problem. Just know that there are other answers out there besides dangerous pharmaceuticals.

  Scientologist and Proud | 3/24/03–4:37 P.M.

  Even I am now rethinking this Jewish doctor guy. I say give him a taste of his own medicine and wait five days before calling HIM back!

  Little Princess | 3/24/03—6:19 P.M.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Ouch. My head hurt. Dr. Melville had warned me about this when he’d put me on the new drug, which, he said, would “boost the effectiveness of the Celexa.” My stellar Empire benefits would continue for only another couple of weeks; after that I’d probably have to sell off all of my possessions to pay for the medications.

  For now, the important thing was that I felt better. And if I felt better, I could write, which was the most important thing of all, considering the e-mail I’d gotten a few days earlier.

  I took a sip of my Americano and glanced around the Fremont Coffee Company. Now that I was writing “full-time,” I found I had to vary the places I went to hang out even more. So here I was at a funky old house that had been converted to a coffee shop. It had hardwood floors and several different rooms. I leaned back in my chair and stretched.

  It was much quieter here than in Victrola. Then again, it was noon on a Wednesday; not exactly a high time for most people to be hanging out in coffee shops. Or maybe it was just my own head that was quieter. I felt like I’d stepped off the roller coaster I’d been hurtling around on for the last month. But I was still a little dizzy from it all.

  For two hours now, I’d been writing a first draft for chapter 2 of my book. I’d managed—barely—to get the first chapter done in time to turn it in for the last writing class. Only a week late! It had been very rough, of course. It still didn’t all “snap.” But it was nonetheless a complete draft and the structure was in place. That much I could tell.

  I winced as I remembered the circumstances under which I’d managed to finish it. After getting that message from the dashing doctor last week, my mood had taken a quick upward swing. Oh yes, his excuse for not calling was pathetic, but I was even more pathetic. I’d called him back immediately and invited him to a party with me on Friday. Then I’d rushed out the door with my laptop to take advantage of the surge in happy hormone.

  Ay. I put my aching head in my hands. The doctor. What a joke! At least I’d known that I was being deluded. Lonely, sad, depressed little me, I just couldn’t help myself!

  Well, that seemed to be changing, thanks to the latest in designer antidepressants and a few dramatic events. I would give myself an hour to blog about it, then get back to my real work.

  Thursday, April 3, 2003

  12:14 PM Breakup Babe

  Move along, move along. Nothing to see here except one unemployed, drugged-up writer trying to pick up the pieces of her life and move on.

  Oh God, you’re saying. What happened this time? Let us guess. The Doctor disappeared again! In your weakened state, you let him sweep you up in his spell, then he turned tail and ran, leaving you even more destitute than before!

  That is a very good guess. But, no.

  I came close, it’s true. I was seconds—mere seconds—away from falling back into his embrace. Then Sensible Girl flew back from Florida to rescue me. Rather, she staged an intervention with a whole cast of characters, including General C., GalPal #1, and Sexy Boy, to save me from the self-destruction I was about to wreak.

  Oh, this sounds juicy, you’re saying. Tell us more!

  As I prepared to dish, a conversation flashed through my head. A few days earlier, GalPal #3 and I had been IMing while she was supposed to be analyzing samples of mouse poop for her big E. coli study.

  Jane says: So, I have a question. Are you always going to be Breakup Babe?

  Rachel say
s: I hope not! Although I’m living up to that name pretty damn well these days, aren’t I?

  Jane: Yeah. And I’m just wondering: Do you think the name Breakup Babe might be jinxing you? Just a little?

  Rachel says: I don’t know. Do you think so?

  Jane: Not that I want you to get rid of Breakup Babe! It’s the first thing I read every morning. It’s just that as your friend, I feel compelled to say that perhaps something like “Bound for the Altar, Babe” might create better karma for you. You know what I mean?

  I stared off into the distance for a few moments, remembering this exchange. It gave me an unpleasant feeling now. The truth of it was like a kernel of corn stuck in my teeth. When I’d created the name “Breakup Babe,” it had been in reference to The Great Unpleasantness. It wasn’t supposed to spawn a cottage industry of breakups.

  Then I pushed the thought away. I would think about it later. I’d been to hell and back this weekend! Didn’t I deserve to blog about it? To entertain my readers and get love and catharsis back in return?

  So here is le scoop.

  The Doctor accompanied me to a party last Friday night wherein a group of my friends gathered to celebrate the glorious occasion of GuyPal #1’s engagement.

  In the last few months, as I’d been chasing inappropriate men down dead-end streets, dumping soup on my ex-boyfriend, and getting fired, GuyPal #1 had fallen in love with—surprise—Jenny! Six months after we’d all flown to San Juan Island, and Jenny had held my hand, the two of them were tying the knot and jetting off to Tahiti for their honeymoon.

  “No, I don’t feel jealous at all.” Sexy Boy was addressing me, The Doctor, GalPal #1, and her boyfriend, The Professor, while waving a glass of champagne in the air. Someone had asked SB how he felt about the fact that Jenny had been his prospect before GuyPal #1 “stole” her away.

  “I like to share my women,” continued Sexy Boy, glancing at me with a sly smile. Everyone laughed appreciatively, except me. I was still irrationally annoyed about the whole Jenny–San Juan Island incident. At least my feelings for SB were firmly under control tonight because of The Doctor’s presence. The Doctor was looking quite handsome, I thought, except for that Tintin hairdo, which had made an unfortunate reappearance.

  “So,” said Sexy Boy, giving The Doctor the once-over, “we hear you’re a surgeon?”

  “Yes, I am,” said The Doctor, taking a sip of his drink. He’d had an awful lot to drink in a short time. I wasn’t sure, exactly, what number drink he was on, but I thought maybe it was his third. We’d been at the party for forty-five minutes.

  I, unfortunately, was not drinking at all. Dr. Melville had put me on a new drug called BuSpar that he said would help the Celexa start to work again. “It’s very common for the Celexa to lose its effectiveness over time,” he’d said. “The BuSpar will help it, and it has very few side effects.”

  This was great news. I wasn’t thrilled to be such a druggie, but it beat getting thrown into the loony bin! He’d warned me, however, not to drink for the first week. “Give your body some time to get used to this,” he’d said, looking sternly at me over his unfashionably large pink-framed glasses. “It would be best if you avoided alcohol for at least a week.”

  “Of course!” I was so grateful at that moment, I would have sacrificed my firstborn to the God of Pharmaceuticals if Dr. Melville had asked me to. Whatever got the demons under control! Though now that I was at a party, where everyone else was drinking and I was nervous about the impression my date was making, it would have been nice to have a drink. Just a little one.

  “What kind of surgery do you do?” said The Professor, who had his arm around GalPal #1. As usual, he had a semidistracted look on his handsome face, as if he were really thinking about the effects of aesthetic and economic trends on German cinema in the period just following the fall of the Berlin Wall. I shot a glance at GalPal #1, wondering what she thought of The Doctor so far. She watched him with intense concentration, as if listening to evidence in one of the murder trials she argued. Her face didn’t give anything away.

  “Well, I put people back together who’ve had horrible accidents. The worse the accident, the more likely I am to get them.” The Doctor glanced around at the group to see how they reacted to this.

  “Is that so?” said Sexy Boy. I glanced at him. Was it possible I detected a slight tone in his voice? A jealous tone, perhaps?

  “Yep.” The Doctor didn’t seem to notice the tone. “I just had a patient last week”—he took another sip of his drink—“a climber who fell a thousand feet on Rainier. He broke thirty-three bones in his body. I sewed him up.”

  Oh God. I was going on my next Mount Rainier training hike tomorrow. What was I thinking? I should cancel. Just forget the whole damn thing.

  “Oh yeah,” said GalPal #1. “I read about that guy! Is he going to be okay?”

  “Well, as okay as you can be when you’ve suffered major fractures in every part of your body and severed your spinal cord, which is to say, not really that okay. The guy will probably be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. But he’s lucky to be alive at all.”

  The flip tone in The Doctor’s voice surprised me. He’d been so sweet when I last saw him. I’d conveniently forgotten about his arrogant side. The group was silent for a moment. I hoped maybe The Doctor would ask the rest of them what they did for a living. But instead he looked around expectantly.

  GalPal #1 played along. “So who was the most messed up patient you’ve had to put back together?” She was already predisposed not to like The Doctor, I knew.

  “I don’t trust this guy,” she’d said over the phone after The Doctor and I had gone on our date at the Brite Lite Lounge. “Once a guy backs off like that, they’ll usually do it again.”

  “I know, I know.” I wasn’t exactly sure where she got her information, because it seemed men never backed off from her. They fell madly in love with her and wanted to stay with her forever. “That’s why I’m not getting back together with him! We’re just going to hang out,” I said.

  What a liar I was! Of course I wanted to get back together with him. He was a man, wasn’t he? My standards—never the highest—had completely disappeared in my post-Empire-firing crise d’identité.

  “Oh, let’s see,” said The Doctor, clearly relishing GalPal #1’s question. “There was the guy who jumped off the Aurora Bridge, a woman who was in an elevator accident in the Columbia Tower…”

  Ten minutes later, I snuck off to the kitchen for a drink. Dr. Melville hadn’t actually said I couldn’t drink, he just suggested I didn’t. Well, I didn’t feel a damn thing from the new drug and I needed a drink.

  The Doctor was still regaling everyone with his tales of horrible accidents and miraculous surgery. I couldn’t tell if they were entertained, repulsed, or bored to tears. I myself didn’t know how I felt. That’s why I needed a drink. Besides, even though the demons had been absent the last few days, there was an undercurrent of sadness I couldn’t shake.

  The blissful union of GuyPal #1 and Jenny, for one, wasn’t doing much for me. GuyPal #1 had been on a so-called dating hiatus when they met! How unfair was that? To make matters worse, he’d said to me dreamily a couple of weeks back, “It’s true what they say, you know. You find love when you’re not looking for it.” Well, screw that! I poured a glass of tonic water and put a generous serving of vodka in.

  Even if I didn’t like GuyPal #1’s bullsh*t advice, I was still jealous. What a great feeling it must be to love someone and have her love you back enough to want to marry you! But I’d had that feeling once not so long ago, hadn’t I? With Loser. And it all turned out to be a sham! I added more vodka and took a giant swig of my drink.

  Two drinks later, I was standing next to The Doctor watching GuyPal #1 and Jenny give a sappy little speech about how they met. They told the story of the flight to San Juan Island, getting lots of laughs along the way. Even I, feeling giddy and a bit light-headed by now, laughed at their stupid jokes. Then I
leaned over and whispered in The Doctor’s ear, “The funny thing is, Jenny and GuyPal #1 didn’t even know each other then, and when she got scared, she reached over and held MY hand!” I sprayed his ear a little with saliva, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  He turned to me. The look on his face was familiar, though I couldn’t place it. My vision was a bit blurry. “She held your hand?” he said. “Like this?” The Doctor took my hand in his, interlaced his fingers with mine. His hand was so warm.

  Suddenly, I wasn’t listening to what GuyPal #1 and Jenny were saying anymore. My attention zoomed to my right hand, which The Doctor was now holding. His fingers gently massaged mine. He kept his eyes on me but I looked down. I could feel his breathing speed up. My own sped up in response.

  I knew, without a doubt, that if I turned my face toward his, he would kiss me. Gently at first, then more passionately. Soon his hands would be in my hair, on my face—just like they had been in the car that time, and—oh my God, it would feel sooo…

  Awful. I felt awful.

  “Excuse me,” I mumbled, then ran out of the living room, into the kitchen, then out into the backyard. I had not felt this nauseated in a long time. I knelt on the ground and laid my arms down in front of me. An innocent bystander versed in yoga might have thought I was doing Child’s Pose, instead of preparing to vomit.

  “Well, this is a fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into, isn’t it?” a familiar voice said. “I take off for a month and you completely lose it.”

  I didn’t have to look up to know it was Sensible Girl. “Leave her alone,” came another, more tipsy-sounding voice. Needy Girl. “She’s been through a rough time lately!”

  “Clearly.” Sensible Girl sounded much tougher than she had on New Year’s Eve, which was the last time I’d seen her. “That’s because you’ve been in charge around here.”

  I retched. God, I felt awful.