A few weeks ago I received a text from a phone number that was like a ghost whispering in my ear, “Remember me? Thought you’d quite forgotten?”

The strangest thing about this particular text is that I managed to recognize the long-deleted number from the guy who stopped calling me and blew me off when I was sick with whooping cough one January THREE YEARS AGO.

Happiness that you deserve, he says. How nice. How quaint. How flimsy and pointlessly offered. Why this? Why now?

Please don’t misinterpret my annoyance and disgust for conceit. The thing is, it’d be one thing if it was a fluke, but it’s not. His unnecessary text is not unique.

At 31 years old, I find that one of the most insulting things about dating has been the “after-the-fact” one-two punch of many an ex-boyfriend/ dalliance. Months later. Years later. After no contact whatsoever. No friendship. No nothing.

Why is it that my worth, my “value,” to these men is only evident once I’m in their rearview mirror? Why can’t they see what they have when I’m sitting in the car beside them? Ex after ex after ex after ex…they find their way back and want….what? What do they want?

The truth is, I have nothing more to give them. They’ve gotten the best of me already, had their chance, and I warned them. Be sure you’re done before you say it. This is the last of me you will have.

There is no more going back. And yet. There are texts, emails, Linked In invites, Facebook requests, and tweets cluttering personal and work inboxes left and right. Clawing at my eyes, my consciousness. More requests. More demands. They cling to my legs as I wade through the present. How do I go forward when I’m dragging around so many yesterdays? Where can I go, where can I look, that they have not yet papered with their inquires?

I have nothing for these men who used to know me. There is no piece of me that remains that they would be content to have. My heart is tired. My will to converse with them silenced. My unkissed lips have gone cold. My insatiate desire waned. I am no longer the woman they knew. “DIDN’T YOU TAKE ENOUGH OF ME LAST TIME!” I want to scream.

It occurs to me that I have not burned enough bridges. I have not been a bad enough girl to release these former somethings from their attempts at rekindled knowing. Rather than lash out or maim with words or deed, I retreat within myself and do not respond.

Happiness that you deserve, he says. Happiness. You. Deserve. I deserve.

What happiness might that be? Surely none that any ex-whatever can give me.

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If 2011 shaped up to be the year that I expanded my offline blog presence and met so many of the bloggers I’ve long admired from afar- joining the raucousness of Bloggers in Sin City, winning a spot at the 20SB Summit, and hosting a tweet up/ blog meet up in Chicago, as well as going so far as making actual business cards for Nic Narrates- where will 2012 take me? Back to BiSC? Back to planning more offline get togethers? Or off in new directions altogether?

And what of my love life? Last year will always be framed in my mind as the year I tried to live with a boy and failed miserably- both at living with him and hanging onto him. I take the blame. I am not without fault. And I accept that I could not fix it. I understand certain things that I never did before; how sometimes there isn’t that one thing that ruins everything, how you stop being able to talk to one another, how it becomes irreconcilable. As for what I do with that knowledge in 2012….well. You wouldn’t actually expect me to have that all worked out three days into the New Year, would you?

What I do know is this: from that failure I was given a unique opportunity. I was able to live with two of my closest friends and spend more time with them than I’d ever otherwise be able to. It was the kindest gift to not only have the offer of a place to stay for weeks at a time for both me and my dog, but to actually have been provided with it. Their friendships will forever stand apart for such graciousness.

Now that I find myself living on my own again in a new year, I’m forced to admit that 2011 shaped up to be wholly unexpected…it brought new friends, new experiences, an end to my relationship of over two years, and a new home. But in retrospect, I spent the greater part of last year feeling sad and uncertain in private.

I hope that 2012 will be a different kind of year for me. Personally, I’m not one for resolutions, but I will say that I hope to be more present in my life, to make more plans with friends both new and old, and to travel widely again. No matter what else this year may bring.

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But…

As I wile away the hours at work or on the couch with one Miss Wendy Lou Who, I know that this solitude is temporary. I’m getting out there and making more plans with friends again. I’m settling into my new place and figuring out what kind of kitchen table I want and where to hang things on the walls. I’m trying. I haven’t given up.

And as for boys? Well, I may be more cynical than is right or good for someone with my deep-rooted romantic longings, but I still believe in love. I may criticize, poke fun, question, doubt, and heckle; but underpinning all of that is the desire to be with my own special someone. To flirt. To catch his interest and hold it. To be kissed. To be touched. To tumble into bed. To feel love. To be loved.

And I will. This Christmas, I may be single again, but who knows where next Christmas will find me?

I’ll allow that such a sentiment may seem “hopeful,” but in fact it’s more simple than that. This single girl’s heart recognizes the inevitability that someone who wants to love and be loved someday will find it. Again.

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How did we become such strangers?

There are no more fights. No more tears. No more raised voices. No more trying. Just sand slipping through your fingers. A break up that wasn’t.

How did this happen to us?

You’re alone again. You’re okay- you’re going to be fine actually. You hear yourself saying the words. But, you still wonder how you wound up here. You wonder how it is that you don’t even speak to each other anymore.

How did we grow apart?

You won’t say you miss him. But dammed if you don’t when that first Christmas card arrives in the mail and, this time, it isn’t from him.

How did we stop laughing together?

You cared for one another. Loved. Saw into one another’s heart and now…now you wonder where that love went.

How did love slip away?

Maybe it began small, gaining momentum in secret. By the time you noticed, tried to change it back…it was too late. Maybe.

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But the months passed and there it sat, nearly forgotten. And, life went on and nothing much, nothing good anyway, happened. The bottle became a fixture of the crisper drawer in the refrigerator, tucked amidst various cheeses and a half-empty limoncello. Spring became summer and summer passed to fall.

But last weekend, last Sunday night to be exact, I went from room to room of the apartment that was never mine and in which I never belonged, until I finally came upon that perfectly chilled bottle. I remembered buying it on a whim, spending more than I’d intended or could afford really, while tasting at Domaine Carneros in Napa the previous year. They called it Le Rêve because it was like, as good as, a dream. And, it was. But, the dream I was holding out for, the hope that I might drink it to mark an engagement, never came to fruition. Not even close.

Standing there in the solitude of his kitchen, in the chill of the open refrigerator door, I reached in and pulled the bottle free. The truth is, I didn’t know what I was saving it for anymore, didn’t know with whom I was saving it to share.

So, I opened it. Unceremoniously. Alone. And I drank it. All of it.

Sitting on the floor with my glass, I packed what belongings of mine remained. I let myself wallow just a little as I toasted what was and not what could have been.

And in the morning, I moved out. With a headache of course because “the dream,” well, I killed it.

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Maybe.

But what about when you force change? What about when you really want change to happen, so much so that you make it happen? What then?

No one ever warned me that change like that…change for the sake of change…is playing with fire. Silly me, I somehow believed I was simply taking control of life. That I was making a command decision. That I was in charge.

I got burned.

I forced a change in my relationship and moved in with my then boyfriend. An oversimplified summary of events perhaps, but we both knew it was a bad decision beforehand and we both went through with it anyway. No matter how I describe it or the months that followed…it ruined us.

And now I’m alone. Again.

The thing is, I like being alone. I haven’t always felt that way, but over time I’ve learned to embrace it, relish it even. I’ve learned that being alone is actually easier in a lot of ways. But I threw that thinking away. I chose to stop watching my life and what happened in it. I chose to open myself up to the change of living with a man I loved, of taking that risk, of believing that what may come eventually might as well come now.

I was wrong. I regret the decision. I regret what it’s done to me. And I regret what it’s done to him.

Everyone always says that change is a good thing. Maybe that’s true. But what I know, what I’ve experienced, is something altogether different.

Change, in my case, is moving into a one bedroom apartment in a place named Bittersweet.

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While it is not happening to me, I care about the people involved and feel a gut-wrenching anguish and odd weakness in my limbs each time I think about it. I am reeling. Shell-shocked even.

Jaded as I am about proclamations of “forever” and “true love,” this sort of occurrence does little to dissuade me from my cynicism. In fact, it has me questioning why people get married at all. Where does it really get you? What does it give you that an otherwise committed relationship does not? And, do people actually still believe it will last when they’re exchanging vows? How?

The thing is, sometimes what you think you want isn’t really accurate at all- whether that’s marriage in their case or living together in mine. You think you want something so much and you strive with all your might to get there, but then when you do, it turns out it’s horrible. Suddenly, you hate it and the person you’re living with or married to. You’ve lost your way, you don’t want those things anymore, and maybe you’ve somehow lost a bit of yourself too.

I find mistakes, or perhaps I should say evolutions, of this nature anxiety-inducing. I literally feel sick inside knowing what I know right now, having watched as things unraveled in my relationship and theirs, seemingly helpless on both accounts to do anything to alter the outcome.

And it’s not just my relationship or their marriage. It feels like everything falls apart eventually, that no feeling of being in love lasts. For those who believe love does last, aren’t you simply neglecting to see that it will change/ already has changed into something else entirely? If not dislike or hate; perhaps companionship, complacency, or even apathy instead? I mentioned I was jaded, didn’t I?

Reflecting on these recent events of the heart, I can’t resolve if- given the odds- it’s better to simply ”opt out” or to just “try your best.” In the meantime, I seem to be unconsciously giving less and less of myself in each relationship I enter into…a cause or effect of  ”Post-Romantic Stress Syndrome?”

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