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Re-reading this post made me look back at myself and think about how kind I must have been feeling the day I wrote it. I can tell I was upset (because it doesn’t really have a very good flow) and that I wanted to make sure I didn’t make an ass out of myself. This is the second post (chronologically) where I talk about being dumped (I think, looking back in my archives is dangerous because I spend a bajillion hours reminiscing instead of finishing the post).

In case it’s not clear below, I wrote this post as I was cleaning out my desk at work (we were moving offices) and I found a note from the ex tucked away. It was a card from the roses (pictured above) that I got for some reason. All I remember is that I really deserved the roses.

I think I was trying to be artistic because I had a vivid memory of red roses from when we met (I didn’t get them though, the roommate did) and pull this whole post together with the red rose theme. Looking back I don’t think it worked, but I’m sharing a post from my past so I’m gonna leave it as is.

What I will say is that red roses are (and continue to be) my favourite flower. Apologies that the photo is blurry, but I kind of like it that way.

Originally posted: August 13, 2009

The precursor to my being dumped story begins in my first year of university during reading week. Those who were geographically close enough to family had gone home to visit them, those of us who weren’t stayed and did more of nothing than usual. It was just after Valentine’s Day and I had been lamenting to myself over the fact that for the 18th time in a row, I was single.

My roommate had her boyfriend come to visit her and he had gotten her two dozen roses and I was a tad jealous but quite happy that I was able to help him get a really good deal on them in the Byward Market. I helped her modify of my big water bottles as a vase and I was able to enjoy them as we shared a room.

There was a guy on our floor that was always very sweet and often girls would say “Oh I wish I could marry you!” to him. Very friendly, open-hearted, kind. I will admit that I had developed crushes on many of the guys on the floor (you were all so awesome!), but one evening (and for the first time ever) that crush became something more.

I’d been waiting for this forever. This being a relationship. I had no idea what I was getting into; I just knew that I wanted it. And all of a sudden it was almost seven years later and I was sobbing into my telephone to anyone who would listen about how he left me that night and shoved his keys under the door. I have never spoken to him since.

It’s strange how things work out. The end of that story was a typed note signed with an orange Sharpie red duct taped to my wall that told me how fucking much he loved me and that he’d call me in a few days about bills.

The beginning of my being dumped story was a note that I found stuffed into my hardcopy of the Values and Ethics Code for the Public Service while cleaning my office for our move across the river. The note was attached to a dozen roses (one of which is pictured above) that was sent to my workplace and said “love me forever, the ex”. I looked at it, shook my head, and threw it in the recycling bin.

This story won’t be about my relationship with my ex. That ended rather crudely on December 5, 2006. This story will be about how being dumped made me into the woman I am today. And though there will be bits and pieces of the story of that relationship mixed up in this story and even though I (and a number of medical professionals and therapists) think what he did to me was inhumane, I’m going to do my best to respect the ex’s privacy.

I hope you learn as much from this as I did, I am certainly going to learn a lot from writing this.