BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

It was February 1986 and I was walking across the UT campus with my soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend. We had just eaten lunch in the cafeteria in her dorm (Kinsolving) and were walking in the direction of my dorm (Jester). The route’s distance was about as far as you could walk within the boundaries of the UT main campus. It was midday, between classes, and the sidewalks were jammed with students.

We had been dating several months, going back to the fall semester. Her name was Jan. Not really, but there’s no way I’m going to say her real name. No sense giving her even more cause to track me down and murder me. And, to be clear, my death at her hands would not have been unjustified. On accounta I surely needed killin.

Anyway, we were just a block or two into our “commute” and talking about nothing or whatever, when she slowed a bit and turned toward me.

“Lee, what’s going on?”

Now, I was only 21 at this time and fairly inexperienced in the ways of the world, and this was the first time I’d been asked this question (that I can remember, at least). If I knew then what I knew then, I would have had some inkling as to how bad things were about to get.

What I did know was that I had stopped dating her emotionally about a month before. Not that I was evolved enough at the time to know such nuance existed, much less to know when to apply it to myself. I simply knew that we were continuing with our “dating” routine despite my intense desire to do anything but that.

We continued to eat meals together, watch movies together, and go to church together (although, I had ducked out of that particular boyfriend duty the previous two weeks). We continued even to make out on a regular basis, clear evidence of my commitment to our routine.

All the while, I absolutely, truly believed that if I could just keep going through these motions long enough, our relationship would eventually, magically, painlessly end, and I would be spared the discomfort of having to break up with her.

Because, you see, I had never broken up with a girl. They had, heretofore, always broken up with me, a process I found tremendously uncomfortable in its own right. And because Jan was a sweet, thoughtful, girl who had never done anything mean or rotten to me or anyone else, the last thing I wanted to do was make her feel as bad as I had when those other girls had dumped me.

So you see? By stringing her along, I was trying to be thoughtful! And sensitive! I was the good guy in this scenario! Totally!

Anyway, my answer to her question went something like this.

“Um.”

We walked a few steps in silence. But not nearly as many as I would have liked.

“Well?? What’s happening?”

“I…um…I…I…”

I considered it an act of abject cruelty that Jan refused to finish that sentence for me. I would have accepted any number of alternative endings, including but not limited to:
* want to break up
* have to leave the country because I killed a man in Reno just to watch him die.
* am totally gay
* will be dead in a week from (fill in the blank).
* am actually a hologram and--*boop* (disappears into the 8^th dimension)

But no, she was going to make me do it.

“Well?”

“I think I don’t think I want to go out anymore.”

^^exact words^^

We walked a very long time in silence. WAY longer than I would have liked. The sun set and rose again. Seasons changed. Babies were born, lived, and died. And still we walked.

Finally, she broke the silence. And by “broke” I mean to say “shattered, destroyed, blew up, obliterated, and nuked from orbit.”

“WERE YOU EVER GOING TO TELL ME?? WERE YOU?? WERE YOU EVER GOING TO TELL ME??”

At some point, Jan threw her books to the ground and climbed atop a bus bench. She wasn’t a tall girl, so this act put her head about a foot above mine, giving her the aura of command and authority otherwise lacking in her terrifying outburst.

It was as public a beating as any person has ever received.

And, for perhaps the first time in my life, my boy-girl instincts actually guided me in the right direction, as a tiny voice inside told me to just stand there, in silence, and take it.

I stood there for a while. As did many others. It was quite a spectacle.

Jan did, eventually, calm down and we (sort of) moved on and (sort of) became just friends. And I wish I could say I learned a life-long lesson that day and never again took the coward’s way out of a relationship, but that would be a lie.

Two years later, I “broke up” with a girl by moving to another state without telling her.

To be fair, we’d only been dating a few weeks – and I did not ditch her consciously.

Hear me out.

I lived in Santa Fe and she lived in Albuquerque. We saw each other only on the weekends. So, after one such weekend, during which we went on a Saturday picnic up in the mountains and drank wine and snuggled like two people who are about to never see each other again, but just don’t know it yet, might do. I went back to Santa Fe the next day, which was Sunday.

The next day – Monday – I received a phone call inviting me to interview for a job in Austin. I flew out Wednesday, interviewed Thursday, and flew back Thursday night. On Friday, they called me and offered me the job. I gave my notice at work that day and started packing the next day. In a week, I was gone.

I simply forgot.

About a month or so after moving to Austin, I remembered. I nearly fainted. It was the worst thing I’d ever done, a milestone which was surpassed two seconds later when I did an even worse thing: I decided to simply leave things be.

It had been a month already, anyway. What good would come from calling her now?

On the bright side, I went many years before doing anything worse than that. And it had nothing to do with ditching a girl without telling her. In fact, the very next time I faced that decision – to just come out and tell the girl it was over – I ripped that bandaid off like big boy and did the right thing.

And twenty-five years later, we’re still together.

So…progress?

© 2014 Lee B. Weaver