Mr. Unavailable #111: Arizona Convalescence

To start from the beginning of the #111 story, see (in this order) Could it Be?, It's Not Him, It's Me, The Recovery, We're Just Not That Into Each Other, The Continuation, The Curse is Broken, Unfortunately, The Make-Up Date, The Phone Call, The Negotiation, Dates 9 Through 12, Dates 13 Through 15, The Public Sex Talk, Bridging the Chasm, The Shut Down, All Kinds of Good, Meeting the Friends, Part 2, Hamptons Getaway, Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Happy Birthday to Me, The Drunken Text, Jeckyl and Hyde, The Layoff, One-Man Show, A Boy in Man's Clothing, The Doctors Visit, Giving Him the News, The Appointment, The Sad Ultrasound, In Between Appointments and The Last Breakfast for the background on this one.

Three days after seeing #111, I was on a plane to Arizona. The trip had originally been scheduled as a quick long weekend, but now that I had no job and no boyfriend, I was thinking of staying for a while. I'd left New York's chilly 50-degree weather clad in black, arriving in Phoenix SPF-less to 100-degree noontime sun and an outdoor taco festival. My friend Julie had picked me up at the airport to head straight to the taco thing. On the way, I told her the whole story. She got it right away. Most people did. "He's not capable of an adult relationship," she said. How many times did I need to hear it in order to believe it?

That was just the beginning of my Arizona convalescence. It was the next day at the Cupcake Love-In--all-you-can-eat mini cupcakes for $10--that I decided to stay for another week and a half. But I don't think a minute went by that I didn't think about #111.

On my first night there, he emailed me to ask how I was doing, which shocked me because I had no idea if I'd even ever hear from him again and it had only been three days since I'd seen him. It didn't--and, unfortunately, did--help. "Maybe it's not done," Julie said. I hoped it wasn't. When I emailed him back the next day, he replied right away. He hadn't remembered I was going away and teased me about how of course I'd travel all the way to Arizona for cupcakes. He said he'd at first thought I'd gone away to pursue that story I'd told him I wanted to do. It was curious: He must have thought a lot of me to think I'd drop everything three days after seeing him to go travel across the country in order to write a story. Interesting. Wouldn't that have meant that he thought I had passion? I wrote back, teasing him about other things in return, but then heard nothing.

Days passed. I slept erratically, taking five hour naps in the early evening and then sleeping through the night or, otherwise, completely unable to sleep at night and then waking up early in the morning. Just as I had in New York, I'd wake up in pain and carry it around all day. Julie was like a combination babysitter/shrink. She'd pack me up in the car and drive me around on errands or listen as I went over things for the millionth time. "I just don't get it, how can someone say they're crazy about you one day and then suddenly decide they don't have strong feelings for you, I just don't get it." She was consistent and steady in every response, towing the party line: "He's not evolved...he's not capable of an adult relationship..."

On day four, we were doing errands and I knew I had a blood test scheduled for the next day in New York. Somewhere between the library and the Sprouts store, I called my doctor. I was hoping to go blood-testless, but it turned out she wanted me to get one last one and, she said, I should really do it there in Arizona. She wanted me to find a lab and go the next day. I wasn't happy: I just wanted to be done with it all. This was supposed to be some kind of getaway and here I was, being actively haunted. Plus, it would be needle #12. I was beyond done.

Julie managed to find a lab on her phone and we made a plan for the next day and went into the Sprouts store. Fired, dumped and accidentally pregnant then not pregnant, I was about to crack. I didn't want to deal with any more--certainly not needle #12. My coping skills weren't just down, they were gone. Holding a bag of grapes and yogurt-covered pretzels, I walked up to Julie and said, "I feel like I'm going to cry" and then burst into tears.

She sent me out of the store with her car keys, but I hadn't been able to pay attention to where we parked on the way in, so I stumbled over to a bench in front of the store. I pulled my hat down low so no one could see the full view, but I was a mess. Julie came out and found me a few minutes later and put me in the car. I still hadn't stopped crying and just barely breathed through my tears, "Coping...skills...down." At least that made us laugh.

Over the next week, all I could manage to do was Sun-In my hair and taste-test and rate every self-serve frozen yogurt place in the Phoenix-Scottsdale area, a task Julie and I undertook with zeal. We also did some second-hand shopping but even that was too painful an activity--going through racks of clothes required too many brain cells that were far too spent.

Almost a week went by and I hadn't heard from #111. Plagued by the idea that I hadn't been loving enough during the relationship, I felt like it was my turn to reach out--again, I still thought the breakup had something to do with me. I emailed him to check in and see how he was. I waited, painfully, for a response and, over the next 24 hours, nothing came. Finally, he replied. He responded with more of a rant than anything else and it was enlightening to read. It was totally self-absorbed, complaining about some symposium he had to put on and how he wasn't getting any recognition for it. It was whiny. It actually made me feel better. I wondered if not having emailed him would have been worse. I have a tendency to put unreachable people on pedestals. And here he was, reachable and whiny. He ended it by asking how my cupcake coma was. I replied, and, of course, heard nothing.

Diagnosis: I have photos from my and Julie's frozen-yogurt tour. We documented almost every store, but the one I loved the most (yogurt shop and photo) was from the day that I had to have that last blood test. We had gone to Sonoran Labs and a nice man took my blood and, instead of offering me a Band-Aid, offered me an armband in one of three colors: orange, tan and black. Naturally, I chose black. We went to Yogurtland after that. Julie took a photo of me with my yogurt and I held up my arm to display my armband. In the photo, I have a slight smile and look scrawny and spent--utterly exhausted. But somewhere in my tired expression, there's a sign of determination. I was barely feeling anything remotely close to strength or determination, but there it was. Everything about the photo--the arm band, the look on my face, even the gigantic cup of frozen yogurt--said, "This one's a survivor."