I Have Now Reached the Point in Loneliness That the Background on My Phone is a Picture of Nature.

I wish that the background on my iPhone could be of my adorable, caring, loving boyfriend. But I don’t have one. My firecracker of a Latin Lover broke up with me on Tuesday. It hurt. Because it was for no reason. At all. Except that he “wanted to feel single”. What does that even mean?

When you’re single – who sends you texts to remind you that it’s going to be okay, or wants to have sex with you all the time, or will drive two hours so you can visit your school friends, or sends you a care package because when you don’t like having to go home? When you’re single – who do you kiss good night and keep warm with? When you’re single – who do you introduce to your parents, grandparents, step parents, brothers, sisters, cousins, family and say that you have finally succeeded in being attractive to another human? When you’re single who will hold you when you’re doing the ugly kind of crying and are too sick to make food so they bring you jello? I suppose this is the risk you take when you date an 18 year old. They break up with you like an 18 year old.

And if I’m going to be honest. The sex was GREAT. If someone told me – you can’t fuck anyone else for the next 3 years – I’d say that’s kosher by me, chief. Although, why someone would me dictating my sexual exploits for an arbitrary amount of time – I have no idea.

But I still love him. And that sucks. Because I know the reason this is happening is because he doesn’t have the capacity or the drive to handle long distance and him being at home makes his anger issues explode times like a thousand, and he has the text communication skills of a cricket. And he doesn’t call or facetime because he can’t.

And he had the balls to tell me “he will always love me deep down” – What the fuck am I supposed to do with that information? Deep down? In the two weeks he was in New York the love that he had for FOR 9 MONTHS is now suddenly deep down? He held me while the world literally was crashing down around us, went on a double date with my best friend, held and kissed me good bye and made love to me over and over again. When he saw my handwriting and smelled my perfume in that care package – I’m sure he remembered how much he did love me. But told me he “wasn’t going to change his mind”. I’m not asking him to. I just want to talk about the crazy bullshit that is now our relationship. It was a lot different than people saw on the surface.

                But he’s not the only one who left me in my own crushing loneliness. I’d love to have pictures of my close high school friend group as the background on my phone. But, I only kept in touch regularly with five friends from home. Abby, Cathy, Bethany, Keaton and Zach. Cathy lives in Philadelphia and works nights and weekends, which is the only time I have free time. Bethany moved to Mississippi. So she gets a pass on that one because that’s just terribly impractical to think that we could spend time together. Keaton and Zach both decided to spend their whole summer in State College, three hours away, with jobs and other girls and shitty apartments with nowhere to crash. Abby is still here. She lives only a few blocks away. But she works two jobs. One on weekend evenings and the other takes over the three WHOLE days she works there because it’s long, hot, manual labor and she doesn’t want to spend time together on those nights and the other nights she bartends. And when she has a free minute she spends it with her boyfriend. Which is typical and how she’s been since we were 12. Always the boy first and then me second.

                So Abby, you ask yourself, what about that group at Kutztown University that made college worthwhile for you. The group that spent hours, days, weeks, months, laughing and joking with you? What about them? Can’t they be the background on your phone? The answer, my dear reader, is no. My school friends are scattered and without a home base – none of us have anywhere to go. Drew works nights, James and I don’t really hang out alone, Taylor works two jobs, Jade works crazy factory hours, my desk girls and I didn’t really hang out. Sam Box lives forever away. Asian, who I spent most nights with, broke my heart for a completely stupid reason with terrible timing. Lizzei is three hours away in Rome and Rachel is two hours away in Burwick. Claire, Elaine, Erin, Erin, Matty, Kristan, Katie, Josh, and all of the other friends that scattered the “group existence” of my life weren’t really close enough to call up out of the blue and ask if they want to drive two hours or if I want to drive two hours to see them. That might be weird….Actually, it would definitely be weird.

                The only people I really feel like I have anymore is Swags, who works a lot, wants to visit his girlfriend and his family in his free time and has a place to stay that is MUCH closer to his work than my house in Reading. He makes a lot of effort to see me and is still, consistently, a really good friend. But unlike me, he has a whole life that keeps him busy, and can’t spend all his time being my bossom buddy. The only other person I have in Chris – who lives an hour away and saw me once this summer (which is more than I can say for other friends) but he has been a great text buddy. He always can and wants to text. That simple buzz in my pocket is enough to feed my addiction to being a social butterfly. I see my brother sometimes but it’s not like when he lived at home and wanted to get taco bell and watch degrassi at midnight and help deal with my parents bullshit (when they’re being stressful).

                It’s weird to go from a place in life that I could show up at five different houses at any time of the day or night and always be welcomed to a place where I ache to go home every night to hang out with my parents. I’m overly eager to post on FaceBook or accept an invitation even if I don’t feel like it. Just to curb the loneliness.