July 4th Week, 2011 will mark the 6th anniversary of my break-up with the Pothead. I will, for the duration of this story, refer to him as the Pothead. For once you are no longer a boyfriend of mine, you cease to have a real name. I’ll give you one guess why he’s called the Pothead. This name is predicated on the fact that if this boy’s eyes were open, he was smoking pot. It was not a redeeming quality of his, obviously, but he had made certain promises and I had hoped he was planning on keeping them. Guess what? He didn’t.
One promise was that he would try to quit smoking and in taking steps to do that, would only smoke at home. Receiving that in the spirit in which it was given, I accepted that as a reasonable compromise. It wasn’t until I’d finally talked him into visiting my Mother that I realized he had no intent of keeping that promise. We made the trip from Tampa to Panama City and stopped at almost every rest stop so he could smoke. I know what you’re thinking - that’s not very safe and you are so right. I thank God everyday for keeping me from harm’s way during this relationship. We charged on and finally made the 5 and a half hour trip in about 7 hours.
Once we got there, the Pothead preceded to mentally and physically check-out of the visit. I didn’t know until later that he had gotten some vicodin to help facilitate that. He would make trips out to his truck to smoke and it was getting to be a little awkward. The first day, my Mother asked, “Why does he go out to his truck so much?” My reply, “He has to talk to his mother.” The next day, Mother says, “He talks to his mother a lot.” My next reply was, “MAMA! He’s smoking pot!” Needless to say, my Mother was furious. She wanted to call the police right then, but I persuaded not to. I wouldn’t be able to get home if he was in jail, plus we were living together at the time and that wouldn’t make for a very happy home life.
We hatched an exit strategy. I would stay in the relationship until the end of our rental lease, which was December (just a reminder, this happened in July). And when it would come time to renew, I would say to him, “I’m going this way and you’re not. Peace.” So it was settled and at the end of our visit, the Pothead and I headed back to Tampa. Once there, I had the rest of the week off, but the Pothead had to go back to work. I spent the better part of the rest of the week thinking about how the next 5 months would go down. I couldn’t even fathom having to go on with this sham of a relationship. I was no longer interested in seeing him, being near him, much less all the other things that you do in a relationship. I had to get out of it, but I knew there would be consequences. The biggest one being that we were probably going to have to still live together for the next 5 months. Thank God we lived in a 3 bedroom house. Side Note: We were living with the Pothead’s friend, who is now my friend, Niki, too.
I’d like to state for the record that I am not usually the one to do the breaking-up. I’m usually the dumpee, but in this case, I did the dumping just in the nick of time and, if I do say so myself, in the grandest of fashions. Once I decided this had to end, I went about making the Pothead’s favorite meal. It was pot roast with potatoes and carrots, gravy, green beans, and biscuits. I alerted Niki to the impending occasion and told her it might be better if she wasn’t there, but not to be gone all night, in case I needed reinforcements. When the Pothead got home, he showered and then made his way to dinner. The place settings were in place and the meal was all laid out. We sat down to dinner. He was seated at the head of the table and I was seated to his left. The conversation was the normal “how was your day” type stuff. It definitely wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, when I couldn’t take it anymore. I loaded my fork with roast and potatoes and as I lifted it, I said to him, “I’m breaking up with you” and quickly inserted the fork into my mouth. He immediately said, “What?” To which I said, “This is happening. I’m done with you.” With that, he went into a tirade, “I can’t believe you fixed this nice meal just to break up with me.” Again I said, “This is happening.” From that point on, as you can imagine, the meal went downhill. He got up and we continued to argue through the putting away of the leftovers and the washing of the dishes. If I’d thought better about it, I should have served the meal on paper plates, that way I could have thrown them away and maybe used it as a visual so that he would understand what was happening. “You are this used, dirty paper plate and I’m throwing you away” but, I only just thought of that.
The meal did, in fact, have the desired effect. It was the nicest way I could send the Pothead off, but he didn’t deserve it.
I’m sure I will write about the next 5 months of that year over time. There are a few other gems from the Pothead Chronic-cals still to be told.
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