The Difference Between Getting and Needing

n i n e t e e n

memories are pay-per-view,
it costs too much to think of y o u . . .

〰️〰️〰️

Eighty-seven missed calls. Twenty-two voicemails that'd gone from distraught, to frustrated, to desperate. Over one hundred text messages that I'd picked and chosen which ones to respond to.

One week since I walked out of my apartment. One week since I'd seen Gus or heard his voice. One week of total estrangement from the life I used to know.

We'd broken up once before, in college. For a month.

It was a year before graduation, during the last few weeks of our junior year. I didn't like the person Gus was becoming. The college atmosphere – fused with too much drinking and not enough discipline all while surrounded by badly behaved influences round the clock – was negatively affecting him. Living separately at our own schools was taking its toll on us, both individually and as a couple.

One uneventful Friday night in the midst of final exam season, when either half the student body was out reveling or staying in due to a horrific rainstorm, my roommate and I had decided to be homebodies for once. Instead of studying we restarted Gossip Girl, ranted and raved about boys, and polished off a second-rate bottle of wine in our dorm room. I'd convinced her to dump the frat guy she was sleeping with because allegedly he wasn't being faithful to her (anyone with a semi-functioning brain knew that), and she convinced me to break up with Gus.

I did. We reconciled right before summer break, and got our first apartment in the fall for our last year together as undergrads. It was like we never even separated.

My roommate was furious with me for getting back together with him. I told her to fuck off and we never spoke again.

I couldn't tell if this time was going to be different or not.

It was different in the sense that I had to actually remove myself from our place. That time I broke up with Gus in college was done drunkenly on the phone with all the confidence that cheap wine and a pep talk from my roommate could provide me with. I didn't have to deal with him face-to-face, nor could I because we resided at different schools, up to our necks in term projects, tests, and presentations for weeks. We couldn't properly experience or handle a breakup even if we wanted to.

This time around, when I found myself going through the motions of waking up, working, then coming straight home to the sofa or my newly acclaimed bed at Collin and Jax's place every day, I knew that this was what it should have been like back then.

One week and I was already feeling less and less like myself with every fucking minute that went by. I hadn't worn any makeup other than some clumpy mascara to work that I seriously should've considered replacing, yet couldn't care enough to do it. I'd been rotating through the same six pieces of clothing I'd brought with me from the apartment, wondering how long I would last before giving up and going back for the rest of my stuff. By the time I'd get home from work, I'd barely have enough energy to eat or shower.

I'd become a recluse. My life had become a fast-forwarded montage of tedious cab rides, endless rounds of laundry, walks with my dog, and never enough sleep. It was the longest seven days I'd ever lived through.

Now it was Monday, again, but since there were only two days until Christmas that meant I was off. Donatella always closed her office the week of Christmas, so it was a pretty convenient week to be out of work given the timing of my breakup.

I had secured myself to the living room sofa for a majority of the day, with Ziggy and a marathon of hackneyed holiday movies to keep me company. Essentially they all had the same plot line; a single mom that claimed to have no room in her life for love just so happens to fall for the new guy in town that was trying to double-cross her earlier. It was a load of shit that I couldn't stop watching, probably because it made me forget about my own pathetic problems for a little while.