Words.

I just now successfully resisted the urge to have a second beer. Though I’m temperamentally and philosophically opposed to abstinence of almost any kind, I’m also not at all in support of my beer gut.

I had a wicked cold that started late last week and just today started waning. I always get whatever nasty shit virus that’s going around, without fail. I just had a cold (though that one wasn’t as severe) when was that? when I was getting out of the drug study, a couple months ago I guess. Time is so compressed this summer. I don’t even have a clear sense of how long it’s been since M and I were together.

Speaking of that, I don’t know if it’s obvious how I stumble over language when I refer to that relationship. I have this obsession, ever since the complicated unraveling of my relationships with J and R, with precision, which I think mostly has to do with a desire to be scrupulously honest. For instance, I don’t think it is accurate to say, “When M and I broke up…” We didn’t break up. He rejected, or maybe more accurately, sent me away. By the same token, when I’m talking about the end of my relationship with B, the man I was involved with for 6 years in my twenties, I don’t say, “When B and I broke up…” I say, “When I left B…”

But does the expression “to break up” necessarily mean a reciprocal action? I always thought it did. Breaking up is something 2 people do, not something one person does to another. But then, I guess most separations are to some extent 1-sided. Am I making a meaningful distinction?