The stories I tell about my ex and my dad to make people understand why I broke up with them
When people ask me about my longest relationship, I tell them that it was two years long, and that we met over Tinder during my freshman year of college. I explain that he was with me during my entire sophomore year, the year that I credit as being on of the most difficult of my life. I like to tell people that the biggest argument we ever had dealt with our refrigerators. How they are organized differently, and how this fundamental difference led to a confrontation while dogsitting at my mom’s friend’s house, and how it made me cry with frustration.
But the story I tell most repetitively, that I find to be the easiest to convey the way our relationship was, doesn’t have to do with the refrigerator argument at all. The story I tell goes something like this:
During my junior year at Loyola, my roommate, my ex (but at the time boyfriend) and I went to a concert/mini music festival in D.C. I drove, and we ended up finding a parking spot close to the venue, where I promptly chugged some Fireball out of its plastic bottle, and my roommate cheered me on. My ex didn’t drink, at least, not at the time, so he didn’t partake. My roommate had had more time to drink than me on the drive down, so she was at a fair level of being ready for the festival. My roommate and I weren’t old enough to drink, but we did have fake IDs, though we were both too nervous to use them to buy drinks at the concert venue. During the concert I was sober, and not really the kind of good time I like to be during live music, and I think my ex and I had gotten into some sort of argument anyway, so I wasn’t really having a good time. Then, Kygo, the artist we had gone there to see, came on, and I was immediately changed. I became part of the crowd, and it was excellent.
At some point during this time, my ex asked me for the Patagonia sweater I had brought with me, apparently he was somehow cold while in the middle of the crowd and while watching Kygo. So I gave it to him. MY sweater; I always make sure to emphasize that a few times. After Kygo was finished, and the crowd was cooling down, and we were beginning to realize as the night wore on that it was fall and pretty cold, I asked if I could have my sweater back. MY sweater. And he said no. And I asked him a few times, thinking he was joking, but he wasn’t. And as I sat there, and shivered, and began to realize that I was simply going to have to be cold because my boyfriend felt more entitled to my sweater than me, and as my roommate gave me glances and took mental notes for later about how this proved he was a garbage boyfriend, I think I kind of realized that we were going to break up soon. But we didn’t. We lasted the whole semester, and halfway into the next one, when I realized that I was abroad, and I could handle being single, and wanted my freedom, and believed I deserved better than someone who would refuse to give back a sweater he had borrowed from me.
My ex isn’t a bad person. He simply wasn’t the best boyfriend, at least not for me, and at least while he and I were dating. Of course I’ve forgiven him for acting ridiculous in this story. It’s funny to think about now, but it serves as one way to describe the way things were for us.
2.
I don’t often write about my dad. I tell people about him all the time, complain about the way he has been in and out of my life without warning, struggle to explain the ways he has always managed to make our relationship and its flaws my fault. But when I write about him, it often takes on this abstract format. One time I wrote a poem about pink clouds, and it was on its surface a result of “breaking up” with this guy Kevin from college, but it was at its core about my dad. One time I wrote a short story from the perspective of my mom as she watched me have a particularly difficult phone call with him.
One story that I find myself telling over and over and over again happened in August, a few weeks before my birthday in the summer before I was going to college. The college I went to, Loyola University Maryland, is overwhelmingly expensive, and the process for applying for financial aid is an extensive one that requires the participation of both of the prospective student’s parents. In a typical, tragic twist of fate, my dad wouldn’t cooperate. I’m not entirely sure how he would describe his side of the story, but I distinctly remember calling him one August night, standing barefoot on the warm concrete of my front porch, and begging him to listen, to at the very least go on Loyola’s website, to see for himself that all he had to do was create his own profile and enter his financial information. But he wouldn’t listen, and as is typical for him, he kept interrupting me, getting louder when I tried to talk to him, to finish my sentences.
I tried so hard, with my limited understanding, to express to him the urgency of his cooperation, the fact that Loyola had already told my mom and me that if we didn’t come up with his information, they would deny us financial aid altogether. Coming from a household where my mom’s yearly take-home pay was less than one year’s tuition for Loyola, I understood the stakes.
And then, in the quiet of an August night, with the slugs on the porch next to my feet, and the bullfrogs across the street at the pond, and the leaves rustling in the cherry tree in our front yard, my dad said something, and it crackled across the phone and into my ear, and I will never, for the rest of my life, forget what it was.
He told me that when I turned eighteen in a few weeks (August 21st, though he hasn’t typically remembered the exact date), when I aged out of the mandatory time period required by the state for child support, when he was no longer legally bound to providing money to me, he was “done”. He told me he didn’t have any money left to give, that my mom and I had already used up everything he had and was willing to part with. Maybe, he suggested, I could go to community college for a few years, save up my own money, and then find a way to attend and graduate from Loyola. But as far as he was concerned, the financial burden of my schooling was not one that would fall upon him.
I didn’t talk to my dad for almost three full years after that conversation. Part of it was my own hurt, but more of it was due to the fact that my mom and I had applied for and received (after three tries) a waiver for financial aid that required I have no contact with my father. I finally caved and agreed to talk to him, but it was difficult to lie to my mom, to choose to risk contacting him when she had worked harder than he ever had for me. But the timing felt right enough, and I had been given enough distance from that night on the porch that I felt maybe he had changed. He hadn’t.
The title of this is a little misleading — I haven’t technically broken up with my dad because I still talk to him today. Our relationship, is, at times, in a good place. Though I have many more stories I could tell that would explain why sometimes I wish he would just choose to be in my life or choose to be out of it.
My dad isn’t a bad person. He’s just a selfish person. He’s the kind of person that I can approach while in the throes of panic, and he will question why I’m upset, will refuse to just sit with me until I calm down, no matter how many times I ask him. He’s the kind of selfish that simply doesn’t realize when he is hurting other people. And at his core I know he loves me.
Sometimes people ask me how, and why, I put up with him. And when I think about the times I have hurt my mom by choosing him, I have a hard time answering. But I guess I put up with him for the same reason we put up with anyone — because we hope they will change and we hope that they won’t.
But the story I tell most repetitively, that I find to be the easiest to convey the way our relationship was, doesn’t have to do with the refrigerator argument at all. The story I tell goes something like this:
During my junior year at Loyola, my roommate, my ex (but at the time boyfriend) and I went to a concert/mini music festival in D.C. I drove, and we ended up finding a parking spot close to the venue, where I promptly chugged some Fireball out of its plastic bottle, and my roommate cheered me on. My ex didn’t drink, at least, not at the time, so he didn’t partake. My roommate had had more time to drink than me on the drive down, so she was at a fair level of being ready for the festival. My roommate and I weren’t old enough to drink, but we did have fake IDs, though we were both too nervous to use them to buy drinks at the concert venue. During the concert I was sober, and not really the kind of good time I like to be during live music, and I think my ex and I had gotten into some sort of argument anyway, so I wasn’t really having a good time. Then, Kygo, the artist we had gone there to see, came on, and I was immediately changed. I became part of the crowd, and it was excellent.
At some point during this time, my ex asked me for the Patagonia sweater I had brought with me, apparently he was somehow cold while in the middle of the crowd and while watching Kygo. So I gave it to him. MY sweater; I always make sure to emphasize that a few times. After Kygo was finished, and the crowd was cooling down, and we were beginning to realize as the night wore on that it was fall and pretty cold, I asked if I could have my sweater back. MY sweater. And he said no. And I asked him a few times, thinking he was joking, but he wasn’t. And as I sat there, and shivered, and began to realize that I was simply going to have to be cold because my boyfriend felt more entitled to my sweater than me, and as my roommate gave me glances and took mental notes for later about how this proved he was a garbage boyfriend, I think I kind of realized that we were going to break up soon. But we didn’t. We lasted the whole semester, and halfway into the next one, when I realized that I was abroad, and I could handle being single, and wanted my freedom, and believed I deserved better than someone who would refuse to give back a sweater he had borrowed from me.
My ex isn’t a bad person. He simply wasn’t the best boyfriend, at least not for me, and at least while he and I were dating. Of course I’ve forgiven him for acting ridiculous in this story. It’s funny to think about now, but it serves as one way to describe the way things were for us.
2.
I don’t often write about my dad. I tell people about him all the time, complain about the way he has been in and out of my life without warning, struggle to explain the ways he has always managed to make our relationship and its flaws my fault. But when I write about him, it often takes on this abstract format. One time I wrote a poem about pink clouds, and it was on its surface a result of “breaking up” with this guy Kevin from college, but it was at its core about my dad. One time I wrote a short story from the perspective of my mom as she watched me have a particularly difficult phone call with him.
One story that I find myself telling over and over and over again happened in August, a few weeks before my birthday in the summer before I was going to college. The college I went to, Loyola University Maryland, is overwhelmingly expensive, and the process for applying for financial aid is an extensive one that requires the participation of both of the prospective student’s parents. In a typical, tragic twist of fate, my dad wouldn’t cooperate. I’m not entirely sure how he would describe his side of the story, but I distinctly remember calling him one August night, standing barefoot on the warm concrete of my front porch, and begging him to listen, to at the very least go on Loyola’s website, to see for himself that all he had to do was create his own profile and enter his financial information. But he wouldn’t listen, and as is typical for him, he kept interrupting me, getting louder when I tried to talk to him, to finish my sentences.
I tried so hard, with my limited understanding, to express to him the urgency of his cooperation, the fact that Loyola had already told my mom and me that if we didn’t come up with his information, they would deny us financial aid altogether. Coming from a household where my mom’s yearly take-home pay was less than one year’s tuition for Loyola, I understood the stakes.
And then, in the quiet of an August night, with the slugs on the porch next to my feet, and the bullfrogs across the street at the pond, and the leaves rustling in the cherry tree in our front yard, my dad said something, and it crackled across the phone and into my ear, and I will never, for the rest of my life, forget what it was.
He told me that when I turned eighteen in a few weeks (August 21st, though he hasn’t typically remembered the exact date), when I aged out of the mandatory time period required by the state for child support, when he was no longer legally bound to providing money to me, he was “done”. He told me he didn’t have any money left to give, that my mom and I had already used up everything he had and was willing to part with. Maybe, he suggested, I could go to community college for a few years, save up my own money, and then find a way to attend and graduate from Loyola. But as far as he was concerned, the financial burden of my schooling was not one that would fall upon him.
I didn’t talk to my dad for almost three full years after that conversation. Part of it was my own hurt, but more of it was due to the fact that my mom and I had applied for and received (after three tries) a waiver for financial aid that required I have no contact with my father. I finally caved and agreed to talk to him, but it was difficult to lie to my mom, to choose to risk contacting him when she had worked harder than he ever had for me. But the timing felt right enough, and I had been given enough distance from that night on the porch that I felt maybe he had changed. He hadn’t.
The title of this is a little misleading — I haven’t technically broken up with my dad because I still talk to him today. Our relationship, is, at times, in a good place. Though I have many more stories I could tell that would explain why sometimes I wish he would just choose to be in my life or choose to be out of it.
My dad isn’t a bad person. He’s just a selfish person. He’s the kind of person that I can approach while in the throes of panic, and he will question why I’m upset, will refuse to just sit with me until I calm down, no matter how many times I ask him. He’s the kind of selfish that simply doesn’t realize when he is hurting other people. And at his core I know he loves me.
Sometimes people ask me how, and why, I put up with him. And when I think about the times I have hurt my mom by choosing him, I have a hard time answering. But I guess I put up with him for the same reason we put up with anyone — because we hope they will change and we hope that they won’t.
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