You Can't Have Your Cakebread & Drink It Too.

Oh that's right, I am with you!
And you're with me!
We're so used to dating, we forgot we're going Dutch!*           

*no pun intended.            

It didn't occur to us to even look at prices.
Seated on overstuffed brown leather bar stools, with a rainbow of liquor bottles extending all the way up to the ceiling behind us, my Ex-Co-Shopgirl now Good Girlfriend and I laughed and clinked our wine glasses together. We had just unwittingly ordered the most expensive glasses of wine on the menu at the bartender's suggestion. (It was not Cakebread.) We did not know this until he handed us the menu after we had placed out drink order. Douche.
My small frame swallowed by a black long sleeve jersey dress & motorcycle boots and her, tall as it is, in expensive bellbottoms and suede pumps - We are typical girls out for a drink. (I told you, I know my experience is parrallel to many!) We are those typical pretty young things sitting at a bar on a Wednesday talking about boyfriends, talking about fashion, talking about skincare discoveries, talking about everything over white wine & a bread basket. There were probably others just like us across the bar - though I recall only us at the bar. (Well, us plus the bartender & the fat man to my left that we tried, unsuccessfully, to ignore, and, well, the piano player.) Deep in conversation, she and I were alone in a room full of people. Both battling heartbreaks at the moment; those dull aching heartbreaks that are easily set off by a song sung about blue eyes or far away lovers or 'Big Girls Don't Cry' by Fergie. I hate that song.
But, at the same time, she and I are both hopeful, both headstrong.
(We are both currently in Self-Preservation Mode.)

his brain.

She is recently out of a relationship, and I am dealing with the looming and very real possibility of my own being impossible to maintain. Our wine is served - it's okay, but definitely not worth our firstborn children. Conversation heads right to the difference between men and women's brains; the idea that typically women think globally whereas men compartmentalize. They go to work - they're in 'Work Mode', they are with their girlfriend, they are in 'Girlfriend Mode' yaddayaddayadda. Women are more apt to take their whole day - take all of the experiences over the dayweekmonth and connect them on a their mental map as a whole - our life is experienced as a whole totally made up by the sum of its parts. While we are working, we are thinking about boyfriends and mothers, and experiences and emotions - and they are all pieces of the same puzzle, slowly being fixed together. My sadness over missing the Dutchman has effected my work and my relationships with my friends. I do not doubt that my Dutchman thinks of me often over the course of his day (he tells me this when we do talk) but it is not the same; he is working, he is busy with a hectic work schedule and that is his life right now. Now, I'm not saying all men (or women) are like this - but I am that type of woman and he is that type of man. Our wonderful perfect three weeks were his 'Girlfriend Mode' and these past three weeks, he is in total 'Work Mode'. The two are not interlocking pieces of the same puzzle; they are two totally different puzzles altogether. Fuck, they're not even puzzles, they're like separate drawers in the same filing cabinet.

This situation would be easier if he was here; if when he got done with work he came home and unwound and switched into 'Girlfriend Mode'. If he filed away his workday, and opened the drawer labeled "Her". But this does not happen when you are permenently separated by nine hours and an ocean.

No matter how much you love a person.

The piano is playing and she and I are still seated - pretty young things - at the dimly lit bar...

After a good laugh over a beehived girl we both worked with who didn't know which way was East and which way was West, Ikidyounot, the conversation veered back to relationships - & good byes. About a year ago, my beautiful Ex-Co-Shopgirl was forced to say goodbye to her own foreign-born boyfriend - They were together for years and the best of friends. He was leaving on an extended business trip, without a return ticket.

Pushing her hair out of her face, she explained,

He was in the towncar going to the airport, and I was driving our Range Rover - we were cruising side by side having just said our goodbyes. Down PCH, until the towncar made a right. I kept driving straight. His car went right, and I didn't. And as I watched them turn in my rearveiw mirror, it felt like I was watching my Whole Life turn right with him in that car - everything I had known for the past two years had made a right at that corner while I kept going straight, on my own.

And I knew I would never see him, as my Boyfriend, on American soil again.

And, I didn't.

When my Dutchman said his final goodbye at the airport, after he whispered I love you to me in Dutch, after he blew me a kiss from the sidewalk, as I drove off; I had the exact same sensation. The fear that That Life - a life with him - was left on that sidewalk along with him and his luggage in my rearveiw while I drove straight, on my own. And like my girlfriend, I didn't want it to be true either.

This morning I sent the email I finally realized I needed to write.
I have broken up with my wonderful Dutchman.
But, not for lack of deeply loving him.