Break-Up
7:00 p.m. Kulp Residence Hall, Goshen College. Goshen, Indiana. Thursday, December 9, 1999.
All I know is that it rips me up that you can't decide anything and you let our relationship fall away. You let go, and now it's worked out nice and neat, come around so that you don't have to end it. I am so fed up that I will end it. I will do what you don't have the strength to do.
I say this, and Tom listens, and then we talk about why he is a jack-ass and what else he's fucked up. I am angry, and I am mostly angry because I called to break up and now I don't know if that is what I should do. Is that the answer? Neither of us knows.
Our time is up, and Tom asks, what it is that we're going to do? I feel seized with anger as I picture him in a little chair, talking to me and twiddling his thumbs as he waits to rush out the door and get on with life - a life with Sarah, I presume. If only I would just end it. I snap at him, "If you're itching to end this, then just do it." He isn't itching, he says. He just wants to go home. He just wants to be out of this place of uncertainty that he's been in for so long.
I sigh, and my inner thoughts slide into a clear embrace. He will not know now. And the longer I wait for him to know, the more bitter and angry I will become. The context we are under right now, as the relationship we always had but no longer remains is pressing down on us and keeping either of us from knowing. We need a break. And I say this. "I need a break. I don't want to hate you, Tom." He agrees but he still wants some sort of relationship. Will we e-mail? he wonders.
I am ready to go. I am ready to get off of this phone and get on with my life. And he tells me he still isn't giving up on the idea of us. The idea that we might come together again some day or get married, even. I ask with so much pain and bitterness and hope dripping around the word, "Really?"
"Yeah," he replies. We love each other, and we say so.
