When One Door Closes

My dearest readers,

I have not been completely honest with you. But I'm about to be. Hope you're ready.

You come to this blog for faith, for hope, for support. You come to read about my dating disasters, my ups and downs, and my humorous approach to romance in the age of technology. You read for inspiration. You read to know you're not alone. You read because there is someone out there who is going through the same thing you are and understands that love is neither easy nor perfect. You read because I get you.

In the past two years, I have been painfully honest with you. I've confessed to crapping my khaki pants on a date in the park. I've admitted to being the girl ballsy enough to ask out her crush on Twitter for millions of viewers to see, and humble enough to acknowledge when I got turned down. I've recalled the intimate moments of a marriage gone wrong, a heart broken, lives torn apart. You know when I am eating a bowl of cereal at my kitchen counter for dinner because I cannot bring myself to cook a meal for one.

You know all this and you (hopefully) love me anyway.

Actually, I think that many of you adore this blog because of - and not in spite of - my flaws. I'm not perfect. I'm not some Hollywood starlet or New York society girl whining about not having a boyfriend. Some Saturday nights, I am perfectly content staying home with a bottle of wine, a box of cookies, and a full lineup on my Netflix. Do I enjoy dating? Usually, yes. Do I dress up, go out, have fun, make friends, meet men, and put myself out there on a daily basis? Also yes. Somewhere in between these worlds exists a girl who manages to stay sane and strong in the face of heartbreak, in the face of everything crumbling around her.

I am holding it together because you - the readers - make me feel like I can do anything I set my mind to. I am forever indebted to your encouragement, love and support.

This is why I owe you an explanation about my moment of weakness. We all have them. It's just that I've been remiss in sharing mine with you.

When Kit and I broke up in September, I thought my world was over. Life as I knew it, the future we'd started to build together, was gone. Suddenly, all those dreams of a Disney wedding and quiet home and kids playing soccer had vanished right before my eyes. I came home to an apartment he no longer lived in --- because I'd kicked him out. I had made the choice to end our relationship and it's no exaggeration to say that the decision took me less than 30 seconds to make.

Find out Kit is cheating.

Scream.

Cry.

Call him screaming and crying.

Tell him not to come back.

Pack his belongings.

Write FUCK YOU on every box in black Sharpie.

Wait for him to pick up his stuff.

The next line should read: Never look back. I wish it did. I wish more than anything that I had the strength to say without a doubt that I didn't regret my decision. That I didn't question it every single day from then until now.

The heart is a curious thing, you see. When you love someone as much as I loved Kit, when you're as happy as I was with him, when you see the shore line coming up on the horizon, you don't ever want to let that go. The heart, even in its broken state, will try to fix things, rationalize them, make them better. The heart is always the champion of love, even when the mind tries to dissuade it. I am someone who has always followed my heart - often against my better judgement - often against advice of friends and family - and I've gotten hurt. I've gotten kicked in the face more times than I can count. The only thing I do know is that I always get back up bigger, tougher, and more determined than before.

My mind knew that what Kit did was wrong. Without a doubt, absolutely, positively, 100% wrong. But my heart...oh my heart ached for him in ways I didn't know was possible. It felt like a piece of me was missing when he was gone. Not something vital like a liver or a lung, but something incredibly noticeable like an arm or a leg. A visible piece of you that you technically could live without but you wouldn't want to and life would never be the same.

So instead of slamming the door closed in his face, I left it open a crack. I hoped against all odds that he would see the light, that he would change, that the error of his ways would overtake his conscience, he'd grow up, and we could work things out. I believed that if we both wanted it enough, if we could find it in our hearts to accept and forgive each other, we'd be ok. My double-sided virtue and vice is that I look for the good in people. I want to see it. In my experience, you can find anything if you look for it hard enough. I ignored my instincts that Kit had betrayed me and would do it again. I let him talk me into giving him a second chance.

I had only been entertaining the thought for a little while, flip flopping back and forth on my decision. I couldn't come to a complete conviction either way, so I left room for either possibility. He would grow up, change into the man I believed him capable of being, I would forgive him and we would move on OR I couldn't bring myself to trust him again and would have to let him go for the good of everyone involved.

We talked, mostly through text or facebook, and I saw him a few times. I tried to keep an open mind but my heart betrayed me. My face clearly lit up the moment he was in the room and all my logic went out the window. I was still the smitten kitten I'd been since Day One with Kit, except that now I was skittish around him too, making for a whirlpool of emotional turmoil.

We had some intense conversations about our future, analyzed our past, and he seemed truly ready to learn from it. He said all the things I wanted to hear, knowing that I loved him enough to take him back eventually. It was a matter of time. My entire family was livid at him. My friends hated him for what he put me through. Even his friends offered me comfort and condolences for his actions. They apologized on his behalf when he couldn't do it himself.

Just when I thought everything was going well and maybe - just maybe - I could really open up and let myself trust him again, another bomb blew up in my face. You see, Kit hasn't had a full time job in several years, so to save him some money, I'd put his phone number on my plan. I know, I know, combining finances seems crazy after only six months of dating but please remember that I *thought* I was going to marry this man and we were already living together. Sadly, he hasn't had the money since we broke up to pay for his own plan either, so I've been covering the expense for both of us. Yes, I am THAT BIG of a pushover.

When I logged on to the AT&T website this morning to pay the phone bill, I noticed that his text messages were *way* over their norm. Typically, who he talks to is his business and I don't care but I had to know how I sent 747 texts last month and he sent over 2,048! There it was, on my phone bill, page after page after page of text messages sent back and forth between Kit and Erica Whats-her-fuck-ski.

Are you fucking kidding me???

Over 1,400 texts between them this month alone. He's been emailing / texting / calling / facebooking me with the right hand and chatting with her *again* with the left. It's like building a sand castle with one hand and digging out from under it with the other. Who does that???

I was shaking uncontrollably. My mouth went dry and my limbs went weak. My head was pounding and my heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest. How could this be happening again? Had I allowed it to? Or was he really just that stupid?

Two things happened at the end of this story: The first is that I Googled Erica's name and came up with this blog written by Megan Marks http://ericawondolowski.blogspot.com/ Here, Megan thanks me for being her dating inspiration and venerates Erica for KNOWINGLY being Kit's mistress.

Megan, whoever you are, wherever you are, I cannot thank you enough for your kind words about me and my writing. I couldn't bring myself to post anything on here about her and Kit after the fact. You did what I never would have had the courage to do.

Secondly, I used Kit's credit card to pay off the phone bill.

Door officially closed.