Since Adam left, I’ve been finding pretty good ways to occupy my time. Funnily enough, I’ve been hanging with his sister, Lisa. I’ve been friends with Lisa for longer than I’ve known Adam, so it’s not a strange thing that we’ve been hanging out. She is very much like me in that she gets lonely, and in the past few weeks all three of us had been together a lot due to Adam’s impending five week long vacation. So now Lisa and I are keeping each other company in Adam’s absence.

Yesterday, Lisa and I went to see Wall-E (so cute!) and to eat at Red Lobster. As we were leaving the theater, her phone began to vibrate, and she almost didn’t answer the “Restricted” call. But she answered it anyway.

It was Adam.

I knew it the minute I heard her enthusiastic “HEYYY!!!” I got that feeling I now remember feeling a lot in the past when I was single and there was a new guy in the picture. I got hot all over. My heart started beating really fast. When I have feelings for someone, I tend to feel them HARD. In MY WHOLE BODY.

I got to talk to him for about 2.5 seconds after he finished talking to Lisa because his phone card was running out, and I honestly was at a loss for words. I could only think of the basics, “Are you having fun? Staying out of trouble?” because I was unprepared for the call. I was so nervous to talk to him after almost a week with no contact.

Why does this person—this person who has hurt me and at the same time made me feel the most exciting and pleasurable of emotions—get to me like this? He is JUST A GUY. And he’s not all that great (OK I am lying to myself a little bit here. When he is good, he is REALLY GOOD. When he’s bad, well, let’s not talk about that.) I am usually so balanced, but I am letting his hot and cold nature influence me. I am either cursing his name and breaking his DVD that he left at my house (whoops) or waiting by the phone for the next sign of contact from him. Then hating him for NOT contacting me. Vicious. Cycle. It’s things like this that make me have sympathy for my friend Claire, who is going through something similar with a guy.

A little background info: Claire began dating Scott about four or five years ago. Murray and I loved when they were together; they were such a fun couple. Scott instantly loved us when we met him, and vice versa. After a couple years, though, Claire and Scott began to drift apart. She says she had tried multiple times to tell him how she was feeling about their whole situation, to no avail. He just would not listen to her when she explained her needs and how they were not getting met. In the midst of Claire’s vulnerability, an ex of hers convinced her to cheat on Scott with him. Claire has this issue with sex where she equates sex with love, and I’m sure at the time sleeping with her ex felt good. She suffered with the guilt for a few days until she finally broke down and told Scott what she did. Scott, needless to say, was furious. He refused to speak with her ever again, and that was the end of that relationship.

Claire went through a rough bout of depression and drinking. She would come over to my house constantly to complain about how Scott was never going to forgive her, and that he was going to hold her mistake over her head for the rest of her life. I always gave her the same piece of advice: “What you did was wrong, but you are going to have to forgive yourself for it and move on. Leave Scott alone. He will never let you forget it, and you’ll always be under his thumb if he ever does decide to take you back.”

She would never listen.

One night after a few beers at my house, Claire left to go to a bar within walking distance to her house. I figured she was safe for the night . . . even if she got drunk, she could just walk less than a quarter of a mile home.

Wrong.

That night, after leaving the bar, Claire drove to Scott’s house. Only she didn’t make it there.

She flipped her vehicle, severely injuring herself and was nearly killed. When I went to visit her at the hospital, she had a huge white bandage around her head covering up her exposed scalp. Luckily, there was no brain damage. Just severe emotional trauma, extreme physical pain, impending doom of a pending DUI charge, and a few wicked scars that would be painful reminders in the future.

Scott didn’t come visit Claire in the hospital. He just told her how stupid she was for driving drunk.

What a guy.

Fast forward to today. Claire and Scott still speak almost daily. He invites her over to his house so they can hang out for a little while and then have sex. He never takes her out. Never wants his friends to see him with her. Yet she waits by the phone for him to text her and runs like a little puppy dog when he does.

So, last night Claire met Lisa and me at Red Lobster for dinner. Afterward, the plan was to come to my house. When I got back home, I got a text from Claire saying, “I think I’m just gonna go home. Gotta get up early tonight.”

This was at 9pm. She had to be at school at 8:15am (15 minutes later than I had to be at work). Clearly, she had plans to go to Scott’s house (editor’s note: why lie?). Well, twenty minutes later, guess who walks through the door?

Claire.

“Change your mind?” I said.

“Yeah. Scott just lied to me. He said they had an early practice (Scott is a drummer for a band. This is part of the reason Claire is so crazy in love with him –  she loves rock stars), but I SAW his car at [name of the bar literally RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET from Claire's apartment].”

WHAT. THE. FUCK. How dumb can you be, to tell the girl who is hopelessly in love with you that you have “an early practice,” only to instead go to a bar with your friends that is literally A HUNDRED YARDS and in PLAIN VIEW of said girl’s apartment?

Anyway, I know this is a long post, but I’m getting to the end here. So Lisa, Claire and I all talked about Scott and his asshattery for a little while, and then Claire left. She said she was “going home,” but I saw her texting Scott, and I KNOW that’s where she was going (again, why lie?).

Why do we let these men do this to us?

My new philosophy is to stop caring so much and quit acting like everything is the end of the damned world. Because these bad things that happen to us? They never are that bad. They just seem bad at the time. I’m going to be a strong woman and I’m not going to let a man dictate my happiness. I just wish Claire could share the same philosophy.