Jokes On You

Over dinner we passed around pictures of the girl he cheated on me with. Everyone called him an idiot and laughed. Those who knew her took the opportunity to tell me stories about her. They weren't flattering. His loss.

My Friend Veronica

I may be a twenty-something, but that doesn’t mean I’m too old to scale inflatable rock walls.

This was at my sorority’s philanthropy. March 2015. Every climb raised money for battered women and children.

Clad in my event T-shirt and Converse, I kissed my love goodbye while he went off to class and I set my sights on ringing the bell at the top of a rather unstable blow-up mountain. 

Little did I know that I should have been worried less about my person crashing to the ground, and more worried about how my world was about to.

As I was preparing for my ascent, my phone buzzed. New email? Ok.

“I feel like this news should not be coming to you from an anonymous source, but your boyfriend has cheated on you multiple times throughout the past year. I am assuming you do not know, but I am telling you because I feel you have the right to know. It is really fucked up that he is doing this to you. You deserve better….”

The message was sent from a bogus Gmail account, and the sender used the pseudonym “Veronica.”

Obviously I confronted said boyfriend about it. He didn’t act defensive/guilty. He seemed sad some stranger thought him capable of doing such a thing. He admitted to some flirtatious behavior with someone else, so perhaps that was the basis of the misconception, and immediately agreed to drop her from social media. He said he was thankful to have friends who look out for me, who keep him morally in check. He looked into my eyes, swore the accusations were not true, and apologized for flirting with this girl.

Like an idiot, I believed my lover over a stranger.

Three weeks later, during the final week of my toughest (and last) collegiate semester, Mr. Wonderful broke my heart. I was devastated. We had been together for 18 months and had had plans to stay together during graduate school.

It had been an ordinary Wednesday. Went to class, did some homework, made dinner, tackled a lab report.

Then I got a text. “Can we go somewhere and talk?”

During his breakup speech, he listed a few bullshit reasons for ending our relationship.

My sadness only lasted until I met up with this Veronica person. She gave me some hard-and-fast information I could not ignore. I confronted my (now ex-) boyfriend again. This time he admitted to cheating, and to hooking up with the same girl (a previous partner) just a few nights after we split.

Guess he was incapable of keeping it in his pants. This chick must be pretty irresistible considering he slept with her before me, during me, and after me. Except she’s not. She’s rather ugly.

Oh and she had had a boyfriend throughout the cheating, too.

I haven’t figured out yet whether my ex likes her, or just likes her vagina. She seems ok with either possibility. News flash, you two: people who cheat with each other, later cheat on each other.

That day I stopped missing him. Anger and hatred set in. I had spent nearly half of college with this scum.

What could possibly make my life more ironic? Turns out that the same night I posted here last, the entry about how I would never hurt him, he was busy cheating on me. 

Three more weeks later. Graduation day.

I ran into his family on the street. I don’t know where he himself was. I was on my way to a party, but they waved me down. It was hard to be polite. His folks knew we had split, but they didn’t know what their son had done.

We made small talk. My own family strolled up. I introduced them. My ex’s mom made some joke about how she was so happy to finally meet my mom, yet she had never imagined it would be under the current circumstances. Everyone laughed quietly.

We went our separate ways. Them to their hotel, us to the party.

The host, my best friend, had seen the interaction on the street. Within a few minutes, the entire room full of graduates and their families were talking about my doucher ex, whom most of them did not know, and how horrible it was that this sort of thing had happened to me.

It was hard to hold my head up. Because as much as he hurt me, I still loved him while we were together, and no one likes to hear their loved one trash talked.

I had no words to defend him, though. Other than mentioning he had said he was sorry after I confronted him for the fourth time. But then the crowd switched from calling him a cheater to a LYING cheater. Is he sorry he cheated, or is he sorry he got caught?

Three days later. Today.

I don’t really care what he does with his life anymore. I don’t really care if he ever reads this. I’m leaving for a road trip with my friends in a few minutes. I’ve got all of my belongings in one suitcase, and I don’t know where I’m staying tonight.

Time for a new adventure. Time to start the climb towards that bell.