What to say...

I feel a need to blog this day into words. In terms of cosmic significance, this day is unsubstantial. But in terms of personal resolve, this day is monumental.

Two weeks ago I wrote a fictional but autobiographical play about a girl who thinks too much. It was called Ruminate. I wrote it in hopes that it would act as an impetus for me to stop thinking and take action. Based on events over the weekend, I finally did. I made a choice. I decided to say NO MORE to that potential romantic interest (read: bottom-dweller who recently belittled by existence) who stepped right out of the lyrics of The Supremes' "You Keep Me Hangin' On" and the pages of the Old Testament when it was still okay to collect harems of women.

I vocalized that resolve today at 11:01 a.m. And by 2 p.m. I had seen Facebook evidence that he had also most likely vocalized his resolve to date someone else to that someone else. And it should have hurt, considering how long he's kept me hanging on. But it felt more like a breath of fresh air. So much of what I felt reminded me of something I'd read in a book. This was my Up a Road Slowly.

In the book, Julie gets her first boyfriend in high school but doesn't recognize that he's just using her for the homework help she provides. Their romance sours, lucky for her, and in the first-person narrative she writes these beautiful lines, a perfect description of how I felt today.

"I had gone to sleep in sorrow and longing; I awoke the next morning--and something had happened.

". . . It wasn't until seconds later that I realized how I was lying, cool and relaxed in my bed, with a sense of serenity and quiet happiness enveloping me. I made myself think of [him] as one might touch an old wound to determine whether or not it is healed, and the thought of him miraculously did not hurt. I was neither angry nor contemptuous.

". . . I wondered why so much had been written about love's pain and so little about the glorious relief of being delivered from love's pain."

So this post is about glorious reliefs and bright tomorrows and how, at least this once, ruminating saved me the pain of saying something I might regret to someone I'll concede brought out the worst in me. I am neither angry nor contemptuous.

Good night, dear void. I await the morning with serenity.

(And if you were playing along, did you catch all 4 You've Got Mail allusions?)