"Did you want me to throw a fuckin' parade?"
It was those few words that lit me up like a firecracker until I exploded. This was his response to me asking why he planned nothing for my birthday.
The year before I had been told, "You do you. I'll do me."
Oh, and how can I forget the year before that when I asked him to spend time with me and got, "Do I look like your entertainment?"
It wasn't until she woke up alone in her new place that she finally understood. Most of her life there was always someone there. Her unbelievable fear of being alone had kept her with loser after loser for years. Not having any close family - and kids in college in two separate states - she often found herself passing the time with a guy she knew wasn't the one. Not even close. Two failed marriages and several years wasted in broken relationships. She often wandered who she really even was anymore. That ambitious little girl she once was had vanished without a trace.
She was bogged down by her emotions - they had ruled her world.
Olivia was usually the first in the relationship to show her cards - to react emotionally - often illogically. This led to fight after fight. Was she self-sabotaging her own happiness? Or was she never happy to begin with and had no clue how to be. Her ex told her he didn't do things for her anymore, because he was just going through the motions. What does that even mean?
But after the break-up and the numbness she felt. She understood.
He had stopped caring about her long ago. He had been pretending the rest of the time. And when you pretend - you don't really do any extra work to making anything better. I had wandered why he had not done any grand gestures to win me back. But then I realized that he had been pushing me to leave him for years. I had held on to a fading dream.
Now alone - starting over for the dozenth time - she wanted to know what now?
"Do you keep pursuing things that you constantly fail at?"
She was tired. Almost 40. And had no clue what path to take next. He had destroyed her. All she had wanted was him. And the one thing he didn't want - was her.
It was in that moment that "he" came into her life. He was everything her ex wasn't. It was what she thought she had wanted. But she still found herself drifting off into thoughts of her ex. And if he would ever leave her mind. Now she was without him - she only thought of the good things they had. And when he held her, how loved she felt.
What had I awakened to? My alarm was blaring and when I opened my eyes, there he was, packing.
"Do you have anything to say for yourself," he shouted. I rubbed my eyes and tried to see what was going on through the blurriness.
"I saw the texts from your ex," he yells. I didn't even know what he was talking about. And just like that, he was gone.
Olivia thinks about her life. She had no career or hopes of one. Her current boyfriend while always there and full of love. Never manages to do anything special for her. On Valentine's Day, he pulled out a dozen frumpy roses from an old gym bag. They had been there for two days and smelt like death and socks.
That night was when it all started.
"Olivia, Olivia Goodwell. Is that you?"
The vibration and dinging of the phone finally roused her to wake. She reached with her right hand to the small wooden nightstand by the bed. Another text message vibrates the phone once more before her pinkie and index finger finally reach the iPhone and pull it closer to her reach.
"Who is that blowing up your phone?" says Olivia's frustrated boyfriend lying next to her.
Olivia moves her phone closer to her face and opens her eyes a little more - flinching from the glare of the screen. The last message read," Please call me when you can."
Olivia quickly closes the phone. "It's a wrong number," she reassures her lover.
"Oh, ok," he says groggily. Before his eyeballs became heavy, and he drifts back off to sleep. Olivia lies in the bed on her back. Looking up at the rounded light fixture above her bed.
It wasn't a wrong number. Olivia had noticed the number right off the bat. It was her ex. The one she left ten years ago. Her thoughts started to run wild into the desolate silence of the night. Olivia thought about what to do next. Life had always been complicated for her. She had a lot of self-doubt about her decisions. She often thought, "How do you really know who is the one for you?"
Depression had been as much a part of Olivia, as everything else. She often didn't know if it was the depression guiding her decisions or if they are really her own. She silently thought to herself, "how can you know if you truly love someone if you don't feel anything at all?"
She imagined it would be more difficult. But it was the right thing to do. She deleted the text message the day before heading out for some brunch.
"Olivia, Olivia Goodwell, order up."
Olivia gets up from her seat slowly and walks to the counter to grab her sub sandwich--an Italian on wheat, extra olive oil. As she brushed her hair to the side, she looked down one more time at the text message she had just written.
"It's time to accept my role in the universe," she says out loud with confidence. She then clicks send on the text. She was tired of sitting on the couch, complaining to her friends, eating ice-cream and crying about what could have been. Her past was her past. Her future lied ahead.
She just wanted to tell her ex to fuck-off. She had a reoccurring dream of seeing him out at her favorite restaurant. And just going up to him and throwing a drink in his face. Then slapping him as hard as she could. The last time she had seen him was when she went down on him in a theater. A basic summary of what their five-year relationship was.
Before Olivia knew it, it was her 40th birthday. She didn't expect much. If her past birthdays were any evidence of her day to come, it didn't look good. She couldn't even remember the last time anyone even remembered or got her a gift. As Olivia set there, looking at her messy sandwich in the sub shop down from her studio apartment. She wandered where it all went wrong. She was 40, divorced and unemployed.
She then hears the sub employee talking to a little boy in line. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" The little boy looks up and just says one word "old."
Olivia pulls herself out of her thoughts of despair and lets out a small giggle. It made her think of her two children. Since they both moved out of state to go to college, she barely heard from them anymore. They had their own lives now and they barely thought of Olivia.