Love Me Do

Task 15, April 5 to April 12

"It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all." Samuel Butler

I'm the old guy at work. And not just by a few years, but drastically. My boss, the GM/President, is 17 years younger than me. It's a curious situation, and I don't know how or when it happened, but it did, and that's that...

It's not a huge issue for me, because frankly, if you know me, you know that I don't pay a whole lot of attention to what people think about me. That's not to say that I don't have relationships at work--I do. I shoot the shit with the young guys, mostly about sports; and the women, well they tend to act kindly around me, as in "can I get you a chair, gramps?"

One young guy--Sean, who works in the sports division on the digital side--sits just outside my office and he and I commiserate over the utter frustration of being a fan of the Cleveland Browns. We Browns' fans, though long-suffering, are loyal to the team, and each other.

One day Sean walked into the office and slumped in his chair. He was pale and disheveled, and announced to no one in particular that his girlfriend had dumped him the previous evening. Her name was Sarah. I'd met her once. Sean had brought her to a pot-luck lunch at the office. She was quiet, friendly and smart enough not to eat the potato salad that Larry, from finance, brought--everyone who even sniffed it went home with a queasy stomach and most missed work the next day. (I ignored it as well--my age and experience taught me to stay away from any pot-luck dish made with mayonnaise).

I called Sean into my office, pointed to a chair, and let him talk. Evidently Sarah ended it with Sean over dinner, in a very kind, matter-of-fact way. She said that she didn't see their relationship growing, and before he could even take a bite of his Italian B.M.T (yes, she dumped him at a Subway shop), she got up and left and he was crushed. She took her sandwich with her, if you are interested.

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And when I say crushed, I mean crushed.

I gave him the tried and true advice: you'll get over it. And I added "time heals all wounds", which didn't help a bit, it never does, but that's all I had.

That night I told my wife what happened and she said, as she shook her head, "you can't tell a person that they will get over it. It doesn't work like that!" And then she waved me away as though I had offended her, and I thought "it SHOULD work like that..." Whatever. But it did get me to thinking...

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I thought about my own past--specifically, my dating past, and yes, I had my own Sarah. Her name was Amber, and no, she wasn't a stripper. Her name was just Amber. She worked in a pet store. I met her at a friend's Superbowl party, and within a couple of weeks we were joined at the hip, calling each cute nicknames (she called me Stooge, after Moe of the Three Stooges, because I tried to cut my own hair once, with a predictable, awful result). And I called her Ralph because she "ralphed" (puked) one night after we drank tequila to celebrate her birthday.

We rolled along for nearly a year. We were more or less living together, and it was all very comfortable. Until it wasn't.

She dumped me on a Friday night, at my apartment, while we were watching LA Law. She talked, I listened, then she was gone. For good. Her reasons were basically the same as Sarah's--the relationship wasn't going anywhere, and somewhere along the line, she had lost her feelings for me.

I found out in short order that there was another guy involved. I fell into a dark, depressed state (like that weird place in the movie "Get Out"), and stayed there for a few months.

I came to understand that I was responsible for the break-up. I was selfish, inattentive, and even mean. And the other guy? He was all about making her happy. They got married. I see them around sometimes.

So I decided to give it another shot with Sean. I took him out for a beer and I told him about Amber. Only I didn't call her Amber, I called her Lauren, because I get tired of saying, "no she wasn't a stripper". I told him that I could emphasize with him, and that I knew how miserable it was, and how sorry I felt.

I did say, "it's going to get better". I had to say it. Because it's true.

TASK:

Think about that relationship that you screwed up. And think about how you screwed it up. And own it. 

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