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She didn't take the breakup well.
Her best friend was surprised. After all, she said, didn't YOU break up with HIM? He wasn't cheating on you. He didn't leave you. In fact he cried, CRIED, sobbing and pleading with you to take him back, leaving embarassing messages on your answering machine promising he'd be a better... what? Person? Boyfriend? That was the issue, wasn't it. It wasn't him, it was you, so why are you so upset?
She just didn't get it.
Lauren cut her long hair boy short. She bleached it, then colored it red. She gained five pounds, then lost fifteen. She started running in the mornings before work. One mile. Then two. Three. Five. Soon she was waking up at five thirty so that she could run for two hours, hardly giving her enough time to shower and get to work before nine.
Work. At first she spent more time at work, putting in twelve, fourteen, sixteen hour days. Then she abrubtly stopped. She became more efficient instead, and left at exactly six PM so that she could spend some time at home with her cat.
Oh, yeah. She got a cat.
She became addicted to Survivor, then went months without turning the TV on at all. She read instead, selecting biographies of presidents and historical non-fiction that she would set aside after the first hundred pages or so. She took a yoga class, then a kickboxing class... she took a course at the community college on money management, and then impulsively signed up for another on begining automechanics, which dropped after only one class.
She bought new makeup and new clothes, trying to appear sophisticated, then girlish, then casual, then finally giving up altogether and wearing the same jeans and sweatshirt any day she wasn't required to be presentable.
Eventually he stopped calling and leaving messages, and she knew he was somewhere else, hating her, maybe even with another girl. He probably even felt sorry for her by now. How sad she was.
She had thought it was what she wanted. She wanted a boyfriend. She wanted a house. She wanted to get married and to have four kids and to go to soccer games and cheer on the sidelines with all the other parents. She wanted living rooms full of toys and the chaos that kids inevitably brought. She had seen it happen to her friends as one by one, or two by two really, they became parents themselves.
But when it came right down to it, she wasn't ready.
She couldn't do it.
When it was there before her, she had crumpled it up and thrown it away.
But really how was she supposed to be a parent when she had no idea who she was? She was still trying to figure it all out. She was waiting for it all to settle. And it wasn't settling. The more she tried to find what was comfortable the more her life seemed turned upside down.
And now she wasn't even dating anyone, which was probably a good thing, since her old boyfriend was something of a drip. The messages - sheesh. It's one thing to want to get back together, but golly gee, don't cry like a baby and beg. It's just so unmanly.