Today I stopped dating someone.

If you know me at all, you probably know that I've never had a serious relationship. While it's not necessarily something I lead with (at 29), it's also become a weird, persistent part of my brand. We don't have to get into the reasons now, but just know that it's an area of my life that I've never prioritized, until very recently.

I just got home from the two month relationship I was in ending. This exceeds my longest actual relationship by 2 months minus 3 days (I had a short relationship with a boy in 5th grade) (We were both in 5th grade.)

I sat across from the two-monther as he stared into his tea. I knew something was up, the last few times we had seen each other, he was distracted. But then we'd say goodbye, and we'd kiss, and I would go home feeling mildly reassured and a little bit crush-nauseous and trusting that if something was wrong, he would talk to me about it.

When a guy you're dating start a conversation with "I've had this thing in the back of my mind," you don't waste a second. You immediately start replaying every single thing you said or did over the last two months to find the moment where, precisely, it went wrong. So I was little bit distracted when he continued with "I am getting to a point where I'm starting to really have feelings for you. But I also know that it's really important to me to end up with someone who's Jewish. I don't know if I can keep going with us knowing that." I was genuinely surprised. I was losing this guy because of something that I actually had absolutely no control over. As someone who finds a fucked up comfort in blaming myself for everything, I felt a little dizzy and a little sad-nauseous.

I found myself for the first time in this weird space- let's just call it "The Relationship Ending Even Though The Two People Still Really Like Each Other Zone." It was kind of foggy and bright at the same time and I kept bursting into tears for like 4 seconds and then getting my shit together and looking masterfully nonplussed only to immediately fall apart again. I even said out loud (kill me) "I'm just getting emotional." Rose. Everyone outside of your apartment knows what emotions are. Some of these people even express them regularly. You don't need to tell someone while you start to cry that you are "having emotions." 

When I came out the other side of The REETTTPSLEO Zone, my project manager side made an unscheduled appearance to try to come up with quick solutions to solve this unfortunate problem. Other than a very alarming 20 millisecond period of considering converting to Judaism (TO BE FAIR my brain was breaking at the moment) I had nothing. So I stalled for time. I managed to draw this relatively simple conversation ("You're not a Jew and I need you to be" "Welp, goodbye.") out for a full thirty minutes. If I hadn't seen the latest Bachelor episode I would think that I had just had the most agonizingly long breakup ever to occur, ever. I said I liked him, he said he liked me, he said he was sorry, I said it was ok (it wasn't, but even as I'm being dumped I'm still trying to come across as the cool, chill girl.) Then we repeated those sentiments again, then again. We really had it down by the seventh time through.

When we finally ran out of air, I faced one of the weirdest moment's in human life- the very last moment that you're dating someone.

You aren't eased back into singlehood. You have one last moment of "actually, I am seeing someone Mom" and then just like that, it's gone. And you can't just keep holding this person's hand anymore. You have to give him back the hand so you can have yours available to wipe the eye makeup off your face if you cry on the subway (if you need to. It's not mandatory.)

So three hours have passed now. And it will take me more than three hours to get over this guy. But my brain is booting back up again and I'm thinking about this relationship's purpose, and how it was maybe a little bit exactly what it should have been:

1) I dated someone for two whole months without freaking out early and running, getting tired of it/him/myself, or finding something horrible out about him accidentally on purpose when I stalked him on the internet.

2) Rose. Buddy. You haven't cried in front of another human being in like 3 years. The fact that you cried sucks and we will definitely obsess over this happening later but for today, let's be proud. Feelings are good and you shouldn't be afraid to have them and share them (I have this written in dry erase marker on my bathroom mirror)(I don't, but fuck, maybe I should.)

3) He was so cute but SO short so our kids wouldn't've have a chance.

I'm glad that this person was in my life. He said he didn't wish it had never happened and I said the same and I meant it. It doesn't mean I'm not sad about it- I'm sad, and angry, and hungry (that one might be unrelated.) But it's not impossible for me to imagine that one day I'll feel that this was only ever supposed to be a first step in the right, new direction.

Before I left (which I did, eventually, throwing my tea away without drinking any of it), he said "please don't delete me from your life." I'm pretty sure I will never see him again on purpose but I don't think I'd be able to completely delete him from life, even if I wanted to.

PS Motherfucker had a British accent. Damn.