How many more do I have to weed through? How many steps are there, anyway?

“It’s a process of elimination and I’m one step closer.”  So says Oona, the protagonist searching for her soul mate in the 2009 romantic comedy Timer.  Oona is, of course, optimistically commenting on the end of a relationship, for though upset that a certain man is now out of her life, she knows he is not "the one" and can continue her search.  My sister said something very similar to me during my recent breakup: “At least now you know he isn’t 'the one' and you have one less asshole to weed through."  And brothers and sisters of the internet, ain’t it the truth!  These hopeful expressions do succeed in making me feel better about my experiences with lameass douche bags, but also begs to ask the questions: Just how many more will I have to weed through?  Yes, I’m one step closer, but how many steps are there, anyway?

Alas, it is true; yours truly was dumped about three weeks ago.  So while I should be mature enough to be held accountable for my own actions without making excuses, I am going to blame my lack of recent posts on him.  Not because I’ve been crying into my pillow every night for the past month, but because writing a dating blog wasn’t at the top of my agenda while so freshly removed from the dating scene.  However, I am now ready to soldier through and provide myself with a little therapeutic blogging.  No, my heart was not completely ripped apart by this one; we had dated for only two and a half months so definitely not the worst heartbreak I’ve ever experienced… but yes, it was the cause of some very bitter disappointment.  I’m not sure if you’ve picked up on this, but not a lot of guys have stuck around me long enough to reach the two-and-a-half month mark, so this dude was kind of a big deal for me.  And he was normal.  (Though, as my sister pointed out, “Obviously I don’t think he’s normal, considering he broke up with you.”  She always knows what to say).

And while we’re on the topic of insightful proverbs from wise women in my family, my mother keeps telling me to stop saying I was “dumped” because I am “not some piece of garbage that someone just tossed to the curb.”  But that’s exactly what I am, is it not?  After nearly three months of spending time with someone who appreciated my straight-forward manner and said my intelligence was a turn on and told me I was pretty and totally adorable, who eagerly met my friends and introduced me to his, who wanted to simply spend time with me even if it meant just sitting on my sofa wrapped in my Slanket writing math tests for fifth graders while I sat beside him and played Scrabble on Facebook… after nearly three months of spending time with such a person, all I got was, “I don’t see this going anywhere… sometimes people just don’t click.  I’ll pick up the tab for dinner.”  Yup.  Trash.  Rubbish.  Refuse.  Debris.  Tossed to the curb to be picked up by burly men in a big, smelly truck.  And though I respect his manner of breakup because he didn’t feed me any crap lines or, worse, ask if we could still be friends, I’m still forced to think him an asshole for dicking around for over two months when he clearly knew we didn’t “click” (which is a point of contention I would like to argue, but really, why bother?).

So yeah, I cried.  And drank a lot of margaritas.  And danced around the bar to “Single Ladies” by my girl Beyonce.  But yeah, I got over it.  It may not sound that way, but remember this was nearly a month ago and I’m catching up on lost time here.  I’m over him.  Another fisher lady can have that one because I’ve thrown that guppy back in the pond and am waiting for my swordfish to come along.  Or my sperm whale, tee hee hee.  Maybe all this time I’ve just been using the wrong bait.