I broke up with you 8 months ago. We broke up because I was moving, you were staying, and I didn’t feel like waiting for you to grow up while I was 2000 miles away. I regretted it almost immediately after I dropped you off at your dorm room and had to go back to my house and curl up in my too-big-without-you bed. But it was the right decision. I’m sure of that now.
We made the end of our relationship Facebook official almost immediately the next morning – you changed your relationship status first. I deleted the mocking sentence “Katie is no longer listed as in a relationship” from my profile as soon as it appeared – no time for anyone to see and comment with a frowny face. We both kept it on the DL. Our breakup made exactly zero ripples in the social atmosphere.
By the next week I was tired of seeing your big dumb face on my news feed, so I hid you. It didn’t help. I clicked through to your stupid profile at least a couple times a day, hating myself a little more each time I saw something new on your wall, something that indicated that you were not as miserable as I was. I despaired of my weakness to my friends. They encouraged me to unfriend you. “I can’t!” I said. “We agreed to still be friends and I don’t want to seem like I can’t handle it.”
After a month I started hiding your friends from my news feed too. I didn’t want to know that they were replying to something funny you said to them.
I graduated, and you commented “Congratulations!” on the photo of me in my cap and gown. It didn’t sting as much as I expected it to.
Two months later you listed yourself as “In a relationship with ______” and it felt like someone had punched me in the gut. I ranted and raved to my friends and again they advised me to just unfriend you or block you or both. “But we’re still friendly! Sometimes we fbchat!” They shook their heads and frowned. They knew better than me.
At Christmas, I was able to watch your a cappella group’s performance on YouTube without crying or getting angry.
And tonight I realized as I was doing my semi-annual facebook purge of people I either don’t remember because we met while I was drunk or because they were never that important in the first place that I hadn’t looked at your profile in about a month. So I clicked on your name, hovered my cursor over the “friends” hyperlink, and clicked “unfriend.”
I think I’m ready to move on now.
Seven Bedroom Suite 