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October 26, 2005
How To Be A Pyschotic Ex
with apologies to Lorrie Moore
First, get dumped. This step is essential. If you can manage to get fired the following day, score!
Getting fired will provide you with the unoccupied daytime hours you will need to destroy property, not to mention the aimless daytime hours to sleep through, which you will come to appreciate more and more with every passing weekday night on which you decide to get plastered and do something stupid.
Remain friends with your ex, even if it breaks your heart. Especially if it breaks your heart. Be so adamant about friendship that when he forgets to return a phone call on an evening he said he "might be up for hanging out," freak the fuck out like you've never freaked out before. Don't be put off by the fact that, when you were his girlfriend, you did not whip yourself up like a banshee on account of one little missed call. You now have permission to blow meaning out of all proportion. Of course this means he was lying when he said he wanted to remain friends! Of course this means he hates you! Of course this means you are unloveable and he is trying to destroy your life! Don't hold back when making assumptions. Think Medea. Remember, the more extravagant your assumptions are the farther along you are on your way to becoming a psychotic ex.
Swear you will not call but will maintain the silent dignity of a martyr. Then, fuck martyrdom. Fuck not calling. You have no dignity! You are the psychotic ex!
Harass and accuse. He won't actually pick up, as he'll be busy, or his phone will be out of battery, or he will be sleeping, but, in a way, this is even better than if he did, as it enables you to leave strings of messages of increasing hysteria. Don't be discouraged if harassment and accusation were not your style before. You are a psychotic ex, and they are now, so shriek like the harpy you are.
The next day, tear up with self-pity and self-loathing as you read the email he wrote from work that morning, after he finally got all your emails and messages. Nobly decline the offer to get dinner tonight and go to the concert with his and your friends. Five minutes later, give in.
Behave admirably, if unattractively, throughout dinner. It will be easy. You will be depressed and deflated anyway. Then, smoke drugs, and, at the concert, drink until you can't not dance, shameless as Sheela Na Gig. Just be sure to point your eyes away from couples. Do not see people dancing close, do not see people kissing.
Oh, while at the concert, see some dumb celebrity. In your state of drunken moroninity, decide what you must do is blog this, which, since you do not have internet in your apartment, requires you to go home with ex. This is acceptable, as his roommates are your friends, and they stay up, too, so, really, you are hanging out with them while he just happens, through no fault of yours, to be sleeping in his room down the hall.
However, you will stay up long after your friends have turned in (you've had insomnia all week). Around four in the morning become genuinely, suddenly exhausted. Just worn out. Done in. Outside it is dark and undoubtedly even colder than inside, though that hardly seems possible.
Gently pry open the door to his room, where he is sleeping and naked. Whisper his name till he wakes, startled. Yes, this is creepy, but, on the other hand, you are psychotic. When he asks what's wrong, look down and say something about the cold outside and the exhaustion that's taken hold and meekly ask if you can crash here, in this apartment. When he asks where you would stay, blurt out in one unpunctuated rush that could you please, please sleep in the bed, you promise you will keep all your clothes on and sleep head-to-toe and you are sorry and you are awful but it is so cold and you are so tired, and please? Of course he lets you. He is nice and decent and kind like that, even though you have behaved abominably. And even though he would not mind if you made use of the pillow he is not using and even though he would not mind if you took off your belt or unlatched your bra, keep everything on and hunch, pillowless and upside down, at the far edge, just to be extra pathetic.
You wake up, rattled by dreams, long after everyone else has left for work. Make some coffee. Step out to smoke. Use the internet. Nod off in an arm chair. Wake up. Make more coffee. Grab roommate's copy of Allure and step out the kitchen door onto the back stairwell to smoke.
Pull the door all the way shut because you are being extra-courteous and will not allow even a hint of your smoke to waft in. Immedeately realize your mistake, but smoke, page through the Allure as it becomes increasingly impossible to stifle the panic.
You are locked out, without your shoes, without your phone, without even a book or another goddamned cigarette, and it will be hours before anyone is home, and all you have is that Allure, which is not all that good, even as Allures go.
Consider your options. There is a kitchen window you consider shimmying through, but quickly realize that not only is the window about four feet from the edge of the staircase and two stories high but also is the kind of window that does not open, like a square porthole on the side of the buidling, which suddenly strikes you as especially stupid.
Remember the way in middle school, when you forgot your apartment key, you would get a neighbor to buzz you in, decline their offer to watch TV in their apartment until your parents returned, assuring them that your mother was already home and probably just in the shower and would no doubt hear you now and let you in. Remember how you'd use your plastic library card to jimmy the lock; you'd shoulder your weight against the door and it would give and you were in.
You don't have a plastic library card now or anything like one. What you do have is panic, psychosis and, you notice, a pile of wood chips. Wood chips. Damn you're psychotic. You try slipping wood chips between the door and the frame, as though they were plastic library cards, which they are not.
Now, press on the door. Press harder. Slam your weight into it. Something heaves, cracks and sighs. You see that you've torn part of door frame off of the wall. Consider stopping. Consider your stupidity. Consider how truly, awfully boring that copy of Allure is and throw yourself against it again. Again. Until, on the fourth or fifth try, the door suddenly gives in, at last becoming as unhinged as you are. You stagger back to survey the damage.
Ah, behold! The work of the psychotic ex-girlfriend!
Posted by hissycat at October 26, 2005 11:03 AM
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Comments
Ah, yes, the hazards of psychotic love. We've all been there. Sadly, things don't change much as you age. You just learn to keep it inside better. You'll still rage through the city streets and eventually leave manipulate messages on voice mail. Just with less frequency, and less intensity.
Posted by: Karin at October 28, 2005 12:58 PM
ionolsen21 So interesting site, thanks!
Posted by: topicstarter at October 18, 2006 05:14 AM
ionolsen40 I like your site
Posted by: pipetka at November 6, 2006 09:10 AM
ionolsen42 I am really impressed!
Posted by: Anonymous at November 7, 2006 04:00 PM