Just Not That Into Us

When I was in high school, I dated this boy named Karl who lived about an hour north of me. When you are 16, this is more than a little "geographically undesirable." For this and other reasons, I told one of my best friends that I wanted her to come with me on the drive to visit Karl, because I planned to break up with him. Of course, you probably guessed this already: when we got there, Karl broke up with me before I could even get the words out, and it STUNG. I cried on my friend's confused shoulder all the way home. Wow, how much that pain caught me off guard.

When I was still in the early days of dating my husband, I spent a day with a friend from work, and we both wondered, in case we ever had kids, if we would want our children to go the school where I still teach. I remember saying something like, "Only if I have a really smart kid who feels comfortable at the school. Otherwise, what would be the point? Already my child will be a faculty child, not in the same socioeconomic demographic as the other kids, let alone in the same neighborhood, and, let's face it, ain't much chance I'll have some athletic super star. Maybe I'll have a smart kid, and he'll be happy in his own skin, and fit right in, but if not, I'll be happy to send him somewhere else." Well, again, you see where my assumptions land me. It stings to get the letter in the mail about my daughter's reenrollment for next year, and not get one for my son, even though that has always been the deal, ever since his diagnosis last year and the decision to let him finish preschool there before moving on to public kindergarten.

It does help to know the rooster will do better if we can find him a more specialized environment, and is sure helps to know that certain pressures will be off me in terms of feeling like I daily walk on the razor's edge, waiting for a call to come. But it only helps just a little.

When Karl dumped me, he didn't do it because of the geography, he did it for a busty girl named Trish, or Tricia, or whatever. Vainly, I felt all the worse for not having a guy waiting in the wings to replace him, too. The kid who will take the rooster's coveted slot at my school will be NT -- we have a waiting list overflowing -- but, for now, we have no right place for my boy to go. We look and look, but right now, we're dumped, and we're single, and, vainly, it smarts.

Yes, it's for the best. But it still feels lonely and painful right now.