Dear Richard (the name has been changed to entertain me)

Sex in the Woods

By Crystal Laramore

Edited by Deborah Martin (the “Cliff” chick-as in been there done that)


Dear Richard (the name has been changed to entertain me)

(The views and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the true feelings of the woman writing this article when she’s not sad/hormonal/drunk/angry/confused/generally pissed-off/drunk/sad…)

Well, I’m here. Where we all have been and never want to go again. Near death. Or, its close cousin, the death of a relationship. It’s a sad place to be and a funny place all at the same time. It’s that place we all promise ourselves we’ll never visit again. We love, we lose, we move on but we’ll never go there again. It’s a dark place and sometimes all the lights go out at once. And there is no power to bring the lights on again. Not even a generator.

When you know it’s over but you’re still holding on by your chewed up fingernails you find yourself doing really silly things. For instance, I’m reading books like Why Men Love Bitches as if turning into a bitch will make him love me enough to not let go??? Actually…And it’s distant cousin Drunk, Divorced and Covered in Cat Hair. Well, we’re not getting a divorce and I have no cats, but two outta three ain’t bad! Didja get that?

I also call my two best friends (one is my aunt) and my sister ALL the time. Or else I would be calling him and according to the Bitch book…I did have to delete his number to accomplish that feat though. I also deleted his email address but some people don’t know we’re letting go (it’s a very quiet sound) so I keep getting his email address on my computer screen in bright blue letters-it’s like a flashing neon sign saying “Hey, remember me-I’m the guy breaking your heart”. It’s like pay it forward only different. LOL! Plus he sent me a txt msg. 4 my bday. Anyway, my poor friends, at this point, want us to reconcile more than I do I think. For their sanity, ya’ll understand.

They’re dodging what Oprah calls the ugly cry. But just like in dodge ball you just never know which me is going to be on the other end of the phone. I can see them now looking at the caller ID, seeing my name and praying to God that I’m having an “I’m a bitch day” instead of the “but he said ‘blah, blah, blah’” and “but I love him soooooo (this is where I am completely un-comprehensible and my shoulders are heaving up and down) much”. There are other pitiful phrases that I’m sure I use over and over but I’m trying to get my pathetic self off hold so I’m trying the amnesia theory; if I could just quit remembering what I’m trying to forget. That memory is a great enemy sometimes; especially when all you have are good ones-really, really good ones. You get one out of the way and your brain goes “But wait, there’s more”.

That whole remembering thing is dicey. It’s nice to have good memories to share with someone but when you become a solo act instead of a duo…it’s just not as much fun to share the memories with yourself of the first time we walked hand-in-hand, the time he caught more fish than I did but I caught the biggest one. Or to remember what you are going to do in the future. Like walk in the rain together…go on an adventure vacation, blah, blah, blah. No, these memories are not fun to share with the sofa and the box of Kleenex, not even with a whole bottle of Big Ass Shiraz all to yourself!

I’ve also turned from listening to love songs like James Taylor’s “You’ve Got a Friend” (a song he pointed out in the car and wanted me to listen to on a rainy, romantic evening) to songs that drip beautiful sentiments like “I took my key and scratched the side of his pretty little souped up four wheel drive and carved my name into his leather seats…” and I don’t even listen to country music. There are other songs about revenge too like that one about all those chick’s personalities; I think there was an El Camino and a key in that song too. Wonder if he parks in the garage? Wonder if he has security cameras? Just kidding. Snicker, snicker.

There are moments during this twilight zone that I do find entertaining. Like when really young men are flirting with me. Sometimes I need reading glasses but even the 250’s (which I don’t need) couldn’t change that 8 (as in 1982) to a 6 (as in I wish he was born in 1962…). I must have “I’m vulnerable and lonely and I’ve been duped errr (really, I’m not bitter) I mean dumped” on my wise-beyond-my-years forehead? Or is it “I’m much older than you and I have a house and my own business (oh yeah, that has a bar - duh!) and money and I can buy you an X-Box for Christmas”? But the good news is there are other single people out there and some even have teeth.

And then there are moments in this twilight zone I’m so angry I want to shoot out his knee. But I’m not so angry I want to shoot out his good knee. Shooting out an already bad knee just doesn’t seem so self-serving. Actually, I posed this theory to my UB and he never emailed me back. I guess it’s best to not have electronic proof of a conspiracy.

Less aggressively, I’ve deleted his picture from all the computer screens and the bberry screen. I’ve taken his framed love notes off the wall and I’ve started going to bars where people are. That’s a good thing cuz I just cried for the first three weeks and people were annoying cuz I couldn’t cry when the people were around. Even though I own my own business and the people meant money, I just didn’t want to see the people.

I also made note of time - a lot. Oh, it’s been exactly one, two, three weeks since he’s called. The last time was 8:11 on Wednesday. Not as bad as 9/11 but ... There are other things I’ve done that are more therapeutic than crying and noting historical moments in time, like when I packed up all his “stuff” in a box, taping it shut and addressing it. There are other things I haven’t done, like have the guts to actually put some postage on it and send it to his mother. Just kidding. Besides, he bought me these really great biking shorts with a padded butt and if I send the box back…selfish I know. It’s one of the side-affects. Ya’ll understand.

Which brings me to the part where I’m not working out (riding my bike) every day cuz those damn shorts are in that damn box. And the songs on the Ipod I listen to are, you guessed it, freaking love songs. There have to be 827 songs I’ll never be able to listen to again if we actually really break up, all the way, forever and ever, if he actually says the words.

Everything is just on hold. Have you been on hold lately? It’s infuriating. Like, I’ve got better things to do than just sit on hold. YES YOU DO! So why don’t we just hang up? Why do we sit on hold with people who try harder to hold on to bad relationships than they do to hold on to loving, committed (hey, there is a fine line between committed and commitment) ones? Because there is that promise that someone, a live and caring person will eventually answer our call. They even come on the line from time to time and promise someone will be right with you. Kinda like Richard is doing to me.

And people (men and women), when you want to break up with someone let me tell you what NOT to say: I have to give you back your heart. What? How? When? Where? Why? All the unanswered questions keep me up at night. It’s 1:24 a.m. right now and here I am writing to strangers…hmmmm. And if we give our heart to you it’s sorta impossible to give it back. Now, when we’ve had enough of being in the perpetual holding pattern, we may take it back, but you can’t just give someone back their feelings-just like that.

You’d think at our stage in the game we’d make better decisions regarding love, but maybe that’s where the lesson comes in. We can’t make people follow through with their assurances and the pledges of love so we must learn to treasure the moments we have while we have them. It’s that whole living in the moment thing.


Life is short and the older you get the shorter it gets. That’s another thing I’ve been doing, coming up with really profound and utterly stupid statements. I practice saying them to him when he calls but mostly I forget how to speak. I know how to write well and I’ve tried to write him a letter but its soooooooooooooooooooo long that I think he would lose interest around page 96. So, I’ve been keeping a journal. Ha! Take that! And that too! It’s a pretty safe place to vent unless you die and your parents get a hold of it. Then THEY may shoot out both of his knees. This medium is also a safe outlet since I quit sending him my articles. The bitch book says he doesn’t deserve to hear from me. Look people, it’s cheaper and more entertaining than therapy!

Not that he did anything wrong or I did anything wrong. It’s just the timing. He has some personal issues that he didn’t foresee and now that life is too stressful I’m the easiest thing to let go of. I understand. Really I do. I can understand how a woman a thousand miles away is stressful. How someone who doesn’t need a thing, like a boob-job or mortgage payments or every spare second of your time is stressful. And the good news is that I’m taking it all in stride and not becoming bitter.

Seriously folks, there are no answers. There are just questions sometimes. And as my sister says “Sometimes there aren’t enough band-aids”. The hard part for all of us is the part where we miss our best friend. We miss the laughter and the banter and the last call or the last text (and if his DOB has an 8 as the 3rd number, you need to learn how to txt!) of the evening. And when you have such a good thing as we do/did, with never any fights and a lot of love, the pain is deep and the loss is sad. But there is always hope.

Time is a wonderful thing. We’ll either all move on or we’ll re-connect. Life is often defined in stages: Birth, Life, Death; a straight line. But as Will Smith said on Oprah (Are you KIDDING me? You don’t watch Oprah when you are depressed?) if you define life as Birth, Life, Death, Re-birth then, you have a whole new outlook. Just take the ends, bend the line, connect the ends and start all over.