Kisses Aren't Contracts:

                                           KISSES AREN’T CONTRACTS:

                                                         

                            

It was Christmas time again. That time of the year when lonely people feel their loneliness more keenly. I was walking home, ostensibly for the benefits of good exercise, but in real sense to postpone the inevitable empty weekend at my apartment. What a far cry from the life I had before that last Christmas morning, when I found myself with the detestable task of having to dumb my boyfriend…

He and I had been dating for a year before I noticed a shift in the relationship. At first the changes were so subtle they passed unnoticed, but suddenly there were cancelled dates, missed dinners that went unexplained..

 “Kisses aren’t contracts Lisa..Dump the guy’’, my sister advised.However, I was so in love, it was no use talking to me then.

On Christmas morning I decide to surprise him by going to his house unannounced. There was another woman there...a tall, willowy beauty. I stood numbly in the doorway as he made some rude remark about my showing up without notice. That was the last straw. Not only had he put me down, he’d done it in front of a stranger!

I would love to say, I immediately dumped him and went out on a razzle,but that would be a lie. I sat by the phone throughout that miserable Christmas, boring everyone rigid with excuses about his absence.

My wake for that dead relationship lasted the entire holiday season. Then I began plotting revenge. ‘This will show him I don’t care, ‘I thought, flaunting my dates at every opportunity. I shredded his pictures and got rid of every personal item he had left at my apartment.However, when my life became a regular pattern of alcohol consumption, I paused in mental self-assessment. Was he really worth this much emotion? ’’Let’s face it, “I said to the face in my bathroom mirror. ‘The man was a lousy excuse for a boyfriend. You made him candlelit dinners; he went out with other girls. You planned your future, he made excuses. It is pretty obvious why you left him.’’

Sadly, it has taken months to rid myself of those self-destructive habits. I don’t want him, but quite often, I find myself going misty-eyed over a particular love song, re-reading his letters, hyperventilating as I walk by his office block.

Am making my way past that office block now. An old habit starts to take hold and I have to wrestle with the urge to crane my neck and peer at the wide, ground -floor windows. Just then, Matt walks out of the building, heading straight in my direction. He stops in surprise. I wait for him to speak. In the end, it is I that calls his name, but I do it without flinching. Not once do I stammer. It occurs to me that there are no icy spears stabbing my insides. My heartbeat is a steady tattoo within my breast-how perplexing! Is it possible that I have finally reached closure?

‘‘Let us go for coffee or something’’, he suggests, and am suddenly reminded how shallow he really is. It has been months, almost a year! Miffed,but at the same time intrigued, I consider conceding to the coffee date and letting him pay the bill. How characteristically arrogant that he should assume that I would, even remotely consider, doing anything on the same planet, let alone in the same room with him!

I turn away, a certain suspicion waxing strong. Have I been so close to the cure, I have failed to realize that I am my own oracle? Here is the Prince Charming of my past, the man I have cried for and obsessed over for months and suddenly I can’t stand him? So…am I over him?