FORGET EVERYTHING I SAID IN THE LAST ENTRY

And the reality of it shall strike you with the vengeance of lightning.


Two months into dating William, and something started going wrong. With family and the holidays looming, we were slated to spend almost two weeks apart - with sickness spreading and William's almost comedically weak immune system- I started sensing us drifting. 


My sharp-as-a-bobcat instincts were not erroneous. On our date on Wednesday, I presented the "s*** or get off the pot" moment. 


His reaction was mixed. After a lengthy soliloquy on my attributes (of which there are many), he started faltering. "The thing...the thing that holds me back is....


[My fickleness?]
[My whimsical, capricious nature?]
[My incomprehensible need to not pump out babies immediately?]


It was none of these. 


"The thing that holds me back is your age." 


You could have knocked me over with a feather. 


My age? I sputtered, over a terrible tray of sushi. But how can I change that? And you've known my age since Date 1. 


He looks like a miserable dog. "I know." Then he rambles on about how he doesn't know if he has the requisite energy to go through the stages of life in your mid-20s with me. He then realizes his fatal error. Anger streams from my eyes like a laser. I take a sip of lycheetini (also badly made at this restaurant) and say, you realize you've put me in a decision-making position. 


I ask him how he feels about never seeing me again. "Horrible," he replies, with a foregone look in his eyes. 


I already know what I have to do. Despite the sickening churning in my stomach and a sense that I have been led on by a man undeserving of me, I have enough dignity to gather my words coherently. I explain to him that the things he worries about are things that I simply cannot change. I ask him why, knowing I was six years younger than him, he chose to date me this long. I ask him, did he not think that we had something special? And why would he  let his thinking overpower his emotions? In the car ride home, it's awkward city, kids. It's rejection, in a sense, and I am not used to it. It is the opposite of what I thought would happen with this person, and I am angry more than hurt. At the end of the car ride I even have the magnanimity to tell him what he has done well [the romanticism/etc.], what he should do with others, and then, finally- that he is an idiot. He agrees. 


Before I leave the car, he stops me. "If I call you, would you pick up the phone?" 


Well, of all the damnedest things, he wants to see me again? 


I say, maybe. I mean, not in a chance in hell. There is a window. A very small window of opportunity in life, and when it closes, you have to live with the consequences. 


On the bright side, I still have his $265 spa gift certificate from my birthday. I think it's time for a deep tissue massage, ladies.