“The Almost Breakup

 

By Ron Stultz

18 February 1995

 

She was lost.  She did not know what to do or where to turn.  She had not planned it this way but then again she had been searching for, "for what?" she thought.  Companionship?  Friendship?  No, more than friendship.  She had wanted affection and she had found it in Joe.

At first it was wonderful. They seemed to be made for each other for apparently he was ready to care about something, someone, beyond himself when he met her and she responded with her own brand of affection and attention.

They had done everything together sense the day they met.  They had "history" as she like to tell her parents and friends and it was so good that he was there, a constant, when so much seemed to be changing in her life.  Without him, the past two years would have been very scary and she knew it and yet if he was a constant, he had also become a constant drunk and a constant going nowhere.

What was happening inside her?  Deep inside through the rubble that were the memories of their time together she could feel, but not look out at, another memory not yet formed.  Another memory which had not yet happened.  Their breakup.  She could not face it and yet she was torn between what she could not do and what she knew was coming and it scared her and yet somehow she knew that he felt the same way.  But she could not do it.  Joe had had a tough life and he often, when he was drunk, would talk of committing suicide and she was not sure he was strong enough now to handle their breakup and that left her trapped and she was too young to be trapped.