It is my decision, but that doesn’t stop the tears. Sad, and suddenly concerned that I’ve made a terrible mistake, I pick up the phone, my fingers dialing without much input from my brain. Tina answers and I begin babbling. “Karin and I broke up I mean I broke up with her but I think I made a mistake…” I try to quiet my crying but am only mildly successful.
“It’ll be alright, kid. I’ve got to go to work, but I’ll call Daniel.”
The door to the room is locked, the shades drawn. Alone in a quiet room, my mind wanders back.
I was tired. I’d been up late, gotten up early, and ridden in a cramped van for two hours, from West Virginia to Pittsburgh. After being told that all film should be in a carry-on and not in checked luggage, I had been forced to open my suitcases, root through them, then wrestle them closed again. At check-in I was told that my bags were too heavy, and the only way they were getting on the plane was if I paid a substantial fee. Despite my excitement, my day was not going well, but when I finally left the ticket counter, I was relieved, if not exactly happy. My wallet was $110 lighter, but the weight of luggage I had to wrangle through the airport was now much lighter too. I stepped onto the escalator just behind Karin and a few other members of our group. We rode it down to the security checkpoint. I had had some classes with Karin before, but I didn’t really know her. I was flattered and amused when she made a request of me:
“Will you be my security buddy?”
"What?”
“I’ve never flown before; I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
“OK.”
“Don’t leave me.”
I could tell she meant it, so I was careful not to lose Karin as we went through security and then found our gate. I stuck with her in Gatwick Airport too, from the arrival gate, to baggage claim, through customs, and all the way to the platform where we boarded the bus to our hotel.
The memory brings the sobs back. Karin had often joked about how she didn't think I would take her so seriously. Almost five months after she told me not to leave her, I just had. The jiggling knob and a knock on the door wake me from my reverie. Daniel’s concerned face meets me when I open the door.
“How are you?”
“Not good." We sit down and look at each other. I lift a hand to wipe my face. Although I have finally managed to stifle the sobs, there are still fresh tears coming.
“What happened. I mean, was it your decision?”
“Yeah, it was my decision, but now I don’t know whether or not it was the right one.”
I had been wondering about our relationship for a while. I enjoyed her company, but I had been growing gradually more restless since we returned to the states. I began to fear that perhaps it was too early in my life to really commit to one person, to be in a really serious relationship. Also, there were little things that bugged me. They seemed like big things. I decided that it meant we weren’t supposed to be together. Deciding that the magic in our relationship hadn’t followed us home from Europe, I quietly resolved to break up with her.
I always met up with her after her Thursday morning class, so I waited for her as I always did. When she came into the lounge, she could tell immediately that something was wrong. She sat in my lap, but I suggested we go outside; I would walk her back to her car. After a great deal of hemming and hawing, I told her that I really enjoyed her company, but I didn’t think we made a good couple. She tried desperately to fight back tears.
“What are you saying? Are you breaking up with me?” She was losing the battle against the tears.
“Yes.” She was angry now, but just for a moment.
“I bought you Lewis Black tickets for Valentines day!” Her anger passed quickly. “I’m the best girlfriend ever.” She was trying to convince me, to convince herself. She didn't succeed, but she did make me feel like a complete Scum Bag. Lewis Black was my favorite comedian, and it was less than three weeks before Valentines day. At the time I didn’t know it, but it wouldn't be the last time I felt like an idiot in relation to Valentines day.
It will be a Saturday night, less than one week after this story ends. I will have a careful plan, but she will not see it, will think that I care about her only enough to buy her some pickles and a movie ticket for Valentines day. She will be wrong, of course, but she will not know it until after she cries, after she throws the box with the diamond necklace in it at my head, after I am made to feel like an idiot.
I figured I should probably be depressed. I was on a bus returning from what many would label the most depressing place in the world: the concentration camps at Auschwitz, Poland. To stand on the railroad spur and look around at the shells of buildings—bunkhouses burned to the ground 50 years before—and remember the atrocities that were committed on that spot, to walk around the edge of a pond still grey with human ash, was certainly disheartening, but the sun was out that day, and even after the grim tour we had taken, there was still only one thing really on my mind. My friend Amanda was sitting next to me, and I talked to her about Karin for the entire ride back to Krakow. Karin and I had only been dating for a couple of days at that point, and I almost believed that our first kiss had only been a dream and we were not actually a couple. But we were a couple, and, at the time, I couldn't have been happier.
She is sitting next to me on my bed and we are making small talk; I glance over at my roommate who is staring at his computer, putting off writing a paper most likely, oblivious to the not-so-subtle hints Karin and I are dropping that he should leave the room. I reach over to my desk and type an instant message to him, not knowing what I should say out loud. “psst…not to be rude dude… but go away (please) :-)” I press enter and he turns, apologizes, picks up a few books, then walks sheepishly from the room. She wants to understand why I don’t want to be with her any more, but I cannot give her an answer; I do not really understand it myself.
I will understand later. I will understand that I broke up with her because I had given up understanding. I will come to realize that it was an unwillingness to understand her and to understand my own fears about the relationship that drove me to dump her.
But right now, I have very little to say. Her new sweater, new bracelet, new haircut are intended to make me regret ending the relationship. They don’t, but she does look good. She finally leaves the room with her makeup running. I have a class that I attend, but don’t pay attention in. I am haunted by something Karin said to me in the parking lot when I broke up with her: “You said I was the best thing that ever happened to you. Were you lying?” I had said that to her, over and over again, but had I been telling the truth? I suppose I could have been lying every time I had said that, but I don't think I was. If I had been telling the truth, though, I had just pushed away not only the best thing currently in my life, but the best thing I had ever had in my life.
Karin’s eyes had begun to get red; the tears came freely. We were almost to her car, and she was dying to change my mind. But I had made my decision; I was not going to be swayed. Not by her crying, not by her declaration of love for me.
“You said I was the best thing that ever happened to you. Were you lying?” Not by that either. She opened the trunk of her car and I took out the things in it that belonged to me. After the trunk slammed, I gave her one last look and then walked as quickly as I could up the snow covered hill, towards my dorm. I was able to hold off tears till I had slammed and locked the door to my room, but no longer.
It is January 29, a Thursday night, and I have class at eight o’clock on Friday morning, but it is early yet and I have had a bad day. On our way to Daniel’s house, Ben and I make a stop to get something that will take my mind off of Karin and the day I’ve had. I decide that Southern Comfort 100 proof ought to do it. I am right. Later, some people will ask me why I needed to take my mind off it, as I was the one who chose to end the relationship. It’s not so simple as that really. We may not be meant to be together, but I’ve still hurt someone I care about. It’s still hard. Although with half a bottle of sweet, strong whiskey in me, I am more confident in the decision I have made.
Despite making myself sick, it turns out to be a pretty good night, one that will forever more be known as “That Thursday Night”. I make it to class in the morning, but I don’t really remember how I got home the night before, just that it was not so much night as it was early morning.
After the airport, Karin and I didn’t spend a lot of time together. We were in London for a week. After we left London for Salzburg, though, I began hanging out with Karin more often. Karin and I both found ourselves in a group of four or five people who toured Salzburg together. We walked around the city together, getting to know it and each other. We visited the old palace of the Prince Archbishops, we took a sightseeing tour. On our second weekend on the Continent, we traveled to Munich for Oktoberfest. During the day, some drunk American Marines struck up a conversation with us, during the course of which one of them put his arm around Karin and began to walk off with her. She ducked under his arm and ran to hide behind me. I found myself happy that she had run to me for protection, not that there was much I could have done had the men actually wanted to cause trouble. On the train home that night, Karin spent most of the trip asleep with her head on my shoulder.
We spent Thursday at Oktoberfest, and on Saturday our entire study abroad program had the unique opportunity of participating in an Austrian wedding. The proprietor of the hotel in which we lived for the semester was getting married We were invited to be guests at the wedding and helpers at the receptions. We served hors d’oeuvres at the lunch reception, then at the dinner reception, which was held in an old castle, Karin and I, with the help of two other friends, served champagne in the courtyard to the arriving guests. When dinner was served, Karin and I sat with each other. I wanted to dance with her that night, but she had gone to bed by the time the dancing started, late in the night.
The next morning, there was a small number of people from our group that were unable to get a ride back to Salzburg right away. So we waited in the castle, the cold seeping in through the stone walls. Eventually, we were able to get a ride from the castle to a cafe in town. There we warmed up, ate chocolate, and waited some more. Finally we determined that there would be two vehicles leaving the cafe back to Haus Wartenberg, the hotel that was home for the semester. I found myself worrying that Karin and I would end up in different cars on the way home. Thanks to my (and, I would later learn, her) careful maneuvering, we ended up in the same car and slept on each other most of the way back. All the time we were awake on the trip, I wondered if I should take her hand. I decided I better not, and hoped maybe she'd take mine. She did not, but I knew that I was attracted to her, and was hopeful that the feeling was mutual.
It is Super Bowl Sunday and three days after Karin and I broke up. There is pizza, beer, and liquor. My team is winning, but I’m having trouble concentrating on the game because almost everyone around me has had a little too much to drink. They’ve lost interest in the game and later they won’t know why every one is fussing about Janet Jackson’s breast, because they are too far gone to keep the half time show in focus. I’m sober because after Thursday night, it will be a while before I stop being queasy at the mere sight of alcohol. By the time the Patriots get their trophy, no one else at the party is even in the room any more. Karin would have been here had we still been going out. She’s home for the weekend instead, letting her parents and her friends pamper her, and spending almost $600 on “retail therapy”, clothes shopping to make herself feel better.
To make myself feel better, I try to go about my business, try to not think about last Thursday, about Karin, about Valentines day rapidly approaching. I try not to think about Europe. We spent almost all our time in Europe together, and when I think back on any event from those three months, Karin is there. The few memories I have from the trip that she is not involved in directly are colored by her absence. We joked in the beginning that our relationship was like soup, or juice. It was condensed, concentrated. By necessity and circumstance, we started off our relationship living together, sharing beds, and regularly spending 24 hours a day together. But now that I’ve lost her, I’ve lost Europe too. I will never have those memories without the sorrow they bring.
It was October 8th, the Wednesday after the wedding. Wednesdays were long days at Haus Wartenberg. Class started at 9 o’clock in the morning and ended at 6 o’clock in the evening. Despite the long, often dull, hours in the classroom, it was a good day. Sitting next to Karin in our German class, we had allowed our pinkie fingers to interlock. I felt like I was in middle school, being so excited over so slight a gesture. After dinner that night, Karin and I retired to her room to watch a movie. Lying next to each other on the bed, we watched Disney’s Robin Hood on her roommate’s computer. By the time the movie had finished, my arms were around her and she was resting her head on one of them. As the final love song faded, she turned to look at me. I knew for sure then, finally, that the attraction was mutual. I kissed her and she kissed me back. It had been almost 3 years since I had kissed someone, and it had been longer for her. I did not stop smiling for days afterward.
We have just had a satisfying dinner at the Wayne Beef & Ale. There were burgers and beer, shuffleboard and some drunk guys who tried to buy the shirt off my back for $60. Our party was six strong including Karin and me both. Dinner was fun and, eight days after we broke up, Karin and I seem to be interacting well as friends. She’s in my room now; all of us who went to dinner are going to the movies later, and we’re waiting for them to return from their respective rooms. I am sitting at my computer, and Karin is sitting on my bed; she turns to me:
“Can you do something for me?”
“Of course, what do you need?”
“Christina said that I should kiss you. One more time. She said that it would help me get some closure on our relationship.”
“I don’t really think that that’s a very good idea.”
“Please just do this for me.”
“Ok. I guess so, but I still think it’s a bad idea.” I don’t get out of my chair; I simply turn towards her and she leans down from the bed, allowing our lips to meet. She is a good kisser. The kiss goes on too long, but I can’t help thinking that this is the last time that I will ever get to kiss these lips and I want to savor that, to linger on that thought and on the kiss, but we are broken up and I shouldn't be kissing her, and since I am kissing her I shouldn’t still think she is a good kisser, because that tells me that maybe we should still be together, and I realize finally that she is not going to stop kissing me, she will just let it go on, so I pull my face away from hers. We look at each other, not moving.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. I can’t go to the movie tonight. I will see you later; good night." She leaves the room quickly and I am left sitting at my desk, confused. In the past, I have always known when a relationship I was in was coming to an end when I no longer considered the girl a good kisser. Before long my friends enter the room, ready to head to the theater.
“Where’s Karin?”
“She decided she was too tired to go to the movies. She went home."
The movie is violent. Very violent. It takes my mind off the kiss, for the moment.
Sunday, February 8th. Four months to the day since Karin and I started dating. And ten days after we broke up. Karin is hosting a dinner party tonight and I am nervous. Since Friday night I have become increasingly less sure of my decision to end my relationship with Karin. I had been having doubts about the relationship, but hadn’t talked to any of my friends about it before dumping her. In fact, when she walked into the lounge that Thursday morning a week and a half earlier, I wasn’t even 100% sure I was going to do it. In similar fashion, I haven’t told any of my friends why Karin really left before the movie. When we leave for Karin’s apartment, I still haven’t told any of them that I plan to ask her to take me back, but when they leave after dinner and I stay behind “to talk to Karin” I think at least some of them know what is going on. When everyone else has left, we sit on the couch, facing each other.
“Karin, I am sorry. I have come to realize that the reasons I came up with for breaking up with you were not things to break up over. They were things that we could deal with by sitting down and talking. Will you give me a chance to talk about those things? Will you forgive me? Will you take me back?”
"Yes."
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