Guest Blogger: The Spare

Well well! I have a day off! Here's a little essay by my daughter, the Spare, with some frank talk about relationships in the under-20 set!  Take it away, Spare!

I’ve been dumped. Maybe there are better ways of phrasing that last


statement. Perhaps this story should be told in a Shakespearean-style

sonnet to amp up the drama and romance, but why exaggerate the

situation when it’s so simple? I’ve been dumped. Dumped like a worn

out pair of tennis shoes.

To put it briefly, Boy is in a committed relationship with Girl A,

but meets Girl B and questions the validity of his committed

relationship. Boy ends his cataclysmic relationship with Girl A and

pursues Girl B. Boy then proceeds to start and end a relationship with

Girl B within the span of one moon cycle, because he realizes his love

for Girl A is undying no matter how unhealthy they are for one

another. Girl B dyes the tips of her hair pink in order to prove she’s

“totally cool” and moving on.

I don’t blame Boy for toying with both of the girls’ emotions. I

blame Girl B for being so naive and determined to make things work

with a guy who couldn’t be more wrong for her. I blame myself. Not

that I’m sitting here hating myself, listening to Nazareth's

heartbreaking ballad “Love Hurts” on repeat whilst finding solace at

the bottom of a gallon of Stephen Colbert’s Americone Dream ice cream

or anything.

This entire experience has showed me how much I have grown in the

past years (mentally of course, because physically, I still have the

body of a 14 -year-old girl). If this whole debacle had happened just

three years ago I would have lost it. In fact, I would



have most likely responded similarly to that of a scorned female lover

in a country song. Now I just grin and bear it. At first I felt a bit

crushed, but then when I got to thinking, I realized how useless it

was to feel any semblance of pain for a guy who was opposite from me

in all ways. If I were the dewy jungle floor, he’d be the cracked and

dessicated desert sand. Nothing about us matched. He hated my favorite

things and I his. I could spend hours talking about how incredible

organisms on the abyssal plane are, while he could spend hours talking

about advances in auto parts technology. Which meant that we spent

hours talking about absolutely nothing, because we bored each other to

no end. So it was no surprise when the tiny spark of our relationship

blew out.

When I was a child, I would spend hours watching movies and

television. It was an easy escape from the scary things in life, the

most horrifying being growing up. I didn’t have my eyes glued to

meaningless crap though. No, I watched far more enlightening programs:

Chick Flicks! I was certain that my life had to mirror that of Reese

Witherspoon’s circa “Sweet Home Alabama,” or just about any Julia

Roberts movie. I’m ashamed to say that only now is it settling in that

my life doesn’t have to be like a movie, especially not like a Chick

Flick, which I now recognize as the foulest creation of anything in

the world of cinema -- only a step above Pauly Shore films. I will

never be the leading lady of my own little Rom-Com, because those

women don’t exist in the real world. In the real world you’re lucky if

you can find someone who you can have an awkward silence with and

revel in it, something I could never have with Boy.

Now, for what feels like the first time in a decade, I’m without

someone holding onto my heart. In an attempt to create the picturesque

life, I let myself go from guy to guy whether it was a meaningless

crush, a foolish infatuation, or a full-fledged squeeze. I got



hurt many times and undoubtedly hurt others. I let people, like Boy,

use me and used

other people to make myself feel like a complete person. All for the

sole reason that the television told me that in order to be a whole

person I had to have a significant other. However, who gets to define

what a significant other is? Almost everyone close to me is

significant. So wouldn’t that make me one super omnipowerful mega

complete person? Probably not, but regardless, with all the friends

and family members that make such an incredible impact on my life, why

should I be so inclined to forge a relationship that I will settle for

someone who is my anti-soul mate? As I consider all these things I

can’t help but be happy that I’m “alone.”

While I probably made very little impact in Boy’s life, he made a

massive one in mine. Perhaps all it took for me to have this epiphany

was maturity and a small touch of heartache. I’m feeling driven and

stronger than I have ever felt in my life and maybe that is cliche to

say, but sometimes in order to grow in life you have to be cliche.

Yeah, I’ve been dumped, but so what? I like to trash pick.