Chop! Chop! Chop!!!

The Boyfriend dumped me. He declared, after several weeks of more and more extreme emotional alienation, that he no longer loved me and was no longer physically attracted to me.

Ka-POW!!!

I had held out hope that we could make it through this rough patch; that he was probably stressed about work or stressed about my stress over his daughter living with us. I was, indeed, having trouble coping -- some time ago -- but recently I felt like I was reaching a good point of fluid balance with her, neither perfect nor completely horrible. Ironic that as the situation with the daughter was feeling better, the one with The B was worse and worse.

Because he has not been treating me with much decency lately, I have avoided another frank conversation like the one that brought the axe down. It'll happen sooner than later, probably in a day or two, when I can see him face-to-face, but for now, I'm still the angered and injured party. And he is the one probably barely tolerating my presence in HIS home.

In the meantime, I am in a much better position to weather this than the last time it happened to me. Then, I was poor, in poor health, lonely, unhappy over my bad luck with the singing, singing badly, struggling to make ends meet with inadequate employment, living in a less-than-ideal shared house. Now I have a small but dedicated network of friends, in addition to my wonderful and supportive (though far away) family, decent employment, and, best of all, I'm a lot more positive about me as an artist. Things have improved immensely, partly (as I've said before) due to having known The B. He did bring some good things into my life. He has also proved to be stuck in some kind of time warp, back in teenage days, when he has to deal with emotional issues. His instincts are fairly primitive in that regard: fight or flight, kill or be killed, telling the other person how you feel will expose the soft underbelly, whoever has the coolest mix-tape wins (just replace with 'iPod' mix, for the 21st century). Criminy!

I honestly don't know what demons he's trying to ignore in his head. I have the feeling that this has lead to resentment, that I represent all that is uncool and prosaic and conventional in his life right now. I may never know for sure. I just know that the me he hates now is the same me he fell "in love" (was it really love?) with, only better off in so many ways. If he doesn't find me cool now, there are some people out there who do. I just have to hunt them down now and make them my eternal love slaves... Kidding!!