Just Because

Flowers were delivered to me yesterday at work, along with an awesome lunch. And a Coke. And a smile. And yes, they were from Guy #1, delivered personally. I need to come up with another name for him, to go along with all of my other capitalized names, but I am struggling on this a bit. I mean, I have The Ex, Mothbrain, Mrs. Second Grade Teacher, Mr. So-and-So from daycare, The Daycare Nazi (Mr. So-and-So's mom) and a few others here and there. There was Emotional Cancer, but he only got that capitalization once, because he didn't deserve capitalization more than that, and then there might be The Girlfriend, because I think The Ex's girlfriend will probably be mentioned more and more, unless she becomes The Wife. But I don't think The Wife will be the right title for her. I will probably go with The Third Wife, because that just seems so much more descriptive and telling of his First Two Epic Failures. So technically this would make me The Second Wife, which I may at some point decide to refer to myself as periodically in third person. Personally, I could also call myself The Dumbest Wife, since I am the one who stuck it out the longest. So far.

The flowers were gorgeous--15 long-stemmed pink roses. The flowers were delivered in person, accompanied by a note that was hand-written on a really pretty shade of purple legal paper that I provided right there in my office. I have found that having a really pretty shade of purple legal paper kind of negates some of the shit I have to write on said paper. Kind of negates it, but not all the way. The reason for the flower and lunch delivery? Just because. This man has given me more flowers in four months than I've gotten in the last fifteen years. No, he wasn't in the doghouse, and no, he wasn't looking to get laid because I was at work and he got plenty of that over the past weekend. Just because.

The Ex never gave me flowers because I insisted he not spend the money on something so trite, something that was going to die in a few days, especially when we needed to save our money for stuff like diapers and daycare. I have learned a couple of lessons from this. The first one is that I will never, ever have a joint checking account exclusively again. If, if, if I ever change my marital or shacking up status, there will be my money in my account, his money in his account and house money in a joint account. Of course, if I had known that the money I wanted to save for diapers and daycare would end up getting funneled over to a World of Warcraft account and gaming apparati (is that the plural for apparatuses?), I would have said, yeah, go ahead and get me flowers. Except I wouldn't have, because every gift from The Ex came with strings attached and every card that he signed with some flowery bullshit felt contrived. Contrived to the point that I secretly started throwing the cards away a few years ago. I have saved almost every piece of paper and every card that's ever been given to me, except for some of the ones that he gave me because they just didn't mean shit. Maybe instinctively my gut was telling me that it felt contrived because it was. Maybe it was my gut telling me I had married a psychopath. Who knows?

My other lesson learned on the whole refusing the flowers thing in my marriage is really the larger lesson, because I realized sometime early on in the separation, and I think deep down I knew it during the marriage, I didn't let The Ex do anything for me. Because of the attachment of strings and all of the other dysfunctional shit. I didn't let him do anything nice for me, and I was such a complete bitch that it probably turned into him not wanting to do anything for me. So I knew before I was even ready to start dating that this was something I needed to change within myself, because I didn't want to be that kind of bitch to anyone else. There is really only one person that I want to reserve that level of bitchiness for, and I am pleased that I can still dose it out as needed to The Ex. Seriously though, I knew that if I ever wanted a relationship or whatever to succeed, I would have to learn how to let a man do something nice for me and just be gracious and appreciative.

I've worked really hard to say goodbye to the Steph who didn't want flowers because I deemed it a waste of money while I was secretly jealous of all the other women at work who got flowers. I've worked really hard to learn how to let someone do something for me, just because, and just go with it. I've worked really hard to be appreciative and grateful that someone wants to do something for me. Just because.