#NerdsUnite: Minute Mingle with Meghan Brown

<editorsnote> Nerds, Meghan is going through some shizzy shiznat. She came on board to be our guru advice columnist, but life had other plans, and now she has had to endure a very unexpected break up. I asked her to write about it ... this is what she same up with ... </editorsnote>

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's Meghan Brown

We're just gonna dive right in. 

Just checked Facebook. Current ads on my profile page: ad for engagement rings, ad for "unexpected pregnancy" hotline, ad for Haagen Daz. 

GUESS WHICH ONE I'M MOST EXCITED ABOUT. 

Here's the deal: I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how to write about this whole thing. I don't know what sort of sense I'm supposed to making of my freaked out, uneven, freshly broken-up existence. I don't know. Maybe blogging will help? I miss blogging. I haven't been able to write a word in weeks. Every time I sit down at my laptop I've got too much to say and nothing comes out. This is something I've been trying to write for a week or three, an entry that's been on my to-do list every day, mocking me from the top of a pile of moving-related errands. 

Because blogging about this scares me. Because once I start talking I'm worried I'm never going to stop. 

It's been a rough month with twenty-million changes and I'm still reeling in ways I haven't quite figured out yet. I'm living like some crazy writer's block stereotype, coming home and staring desperately at my computer while eating yet another sandwich and trying not to cry over Six Feet Under episodes (and, uh, failing) (because that show is made of nothing but frickafrackin ridiculous quality omg). 

So yeah. I'm a single white female living alone in Los Angeles. Wait. What, me single? ...Living in a little house? ...Alone?

Yes and yes. Let me tell you: when you get out of a five-year relationship the best thing you can possibly do is move. Go. Preferably, go to the most awesome place ever. Or, don't. Because I live there, and you can't have it. 

Rim shot?

Anyway. My guest house is the only thing keeping me sane. The plumbing backed up over the weekend and filled my tub with scary sludge and the skylights make it vaguelly equivocal to living inside of an oven but you know what? I couldn't care less. There's a grown-up couch and I have access to 100% of the food in the fridge and every wall is over-decorated with pretty things I like and there you have it hello this is heaven. 

I am basically going crazy. 

Also: I need to put it out there that I had the best breakup imaginable. It was full of nothing but love and respect and dignity and kindness and blah blah blah. I will never say a bad word about him. Will not. He is good and goodness. I am good sometimes and sort of morally all right and I loved him a whole lot. So we were good to each other through the end and it never got ugly it never got mean it always stayed kind, kind, kind. 

So... if we got along so well... what happened?

Eh.

...It was just over. 

The time came to move forward and we didn't, for a variety of reasons I'm not going to go into here. Because Former Boyfriend is a private person who deserves to have that respected to the most. 

It. was. just. over. Itwasjustover. 

And I miss him but I don't want to come back. And it's hard because there's no anger, no frustration, no desire to scream at him or burn pictures or throw darts, no need to call my friends and commiserate over what an asshole he is. There's nothing fun to hide behind. There's just a deep, nagging sadness. Sad sad sad. 

Anger? Anger I can do. I can be pissed off like nobody's business. I can rant and rave and scream and write bitchy plays and spitefully delete you on Facebook. Sad? I'm not so good with sad. I don't like it. Sad makes me hungry and thirsty and raw and wracked and needy. Sad reminds me that I'm not some screamy superhero. I'm just one more sad girl making it through a long summer. Ugh. 

I alternate between crying like a crazy person at Target and feeling totally fine. The awful thing about feeling fine? Is that you don't actually feel fine. When I feel fine I feel like tearing myself to shreds. How dare I feel fine? If I'd really loved him, I'd feel something deeper. If I'd really loved him, I wouldn't be able to get up and go to work. I wouldn't be able to hang out with my friends. I wouldn't be able to go to parties and museum's and bbqs and carpools and feel happy and content. I wouldn't be able to buy groceries or get Internet hooked up or pick out pictures for my cute little house. If I'd really loved him, I'd be crying. My wings should ache. 

And then suddenly I am crying, and it's always in public always in some strange aisle of some tacky store (or, uh, at that tow-yard, but that's another story) and it's mortifying and I would do anything just anything to stop stop stop feeling this way, anything to stop this strange new world where I don't have anyone to go grocery shopping with. 

That's part of the problem I'm having. Could Jen Friel write You're Single, Now What? for Dummies instead of Personal Branding for Dummies? Because I have some major questions. Like: Who catches the spiders? How do you fall asleep? What happens if you're sick? Or if you're tired and want food but don't want to go get food and need someone to get it to you because it's Friday night and you're feeling lazy? 

What happens when you're crying and the person who rubs your back and makes you feel better is the one person in the world that you can't call? 

And beyond that... what happens to that life you had planned with that other person? What happens to those imaginary children? It all felt so real. Lucy and Violet and Austin. That house in Venice Beach. The trips we planned to take. What happens to Key West in December? The Redwoods in June? 

Does everything just disappear? 

...Yes. Yes, it does. 

(And this is me with a good breakup. Can you imagine what I'm like after a bad one? Because I can't. Or maybe just don't want to.)

So life is unrecognizable and I'm starting over. I have a new house and money in the bank and a notebook full of ideas. I have four pairs of fancy jeans that I need to be able to fit back into post haste. I have plays to write and short stories to start and that screenplay that's been lingering in the back of my mind. I've got my work cut out for me... if only I wasn't so totally incapacitated with my dull, ragged grief that I can barely string two words together. 

So. I need to pick myself up by the bootstraps. I need to write and exercise and spend time with friends and family and read a lot of sad books and get back into practicing the piano every day. Because it's going to be OK. It has to be OK. This all has to be worth it. 

...Right?

#nerdsunite

Click here to find out more about Meghan