This is not the way you want to be broken up with. You do not want your girlfriend to break up with you out of the blue and leave you to find out that she did so from Katie at the bar. It is a really shitty way to get broken up with.
Anyway, it’s been a rough past couple of days for me. This isn’t the first time I’ve been broken up with, but it is the first time I’ve been left for someone else. If you’ve never had that experience yourself, let me tell you, it is everything they say it is.
It might have been easier to deal with if things weren’t going well, but that wasn’t the case. I’ve heard no argument from her about that, either. I was in love with her (I do wish I’d told her), and she said she loved me. That’s what makes this so hopelessly demoralizing. If there had been fights, problems, disagreements, that would have been understandable. If she thought I’d been a dick, that would have been understandable. But when things are going as well as you can imagine, and when you’re doing the best you can– being the best you can– and you still aren’t good enough for them, what does it say? That your best isn’t good enough. That you’re inadequate. That there was nothing you could have done to avoid being left– not because you did any specific thing wrong, or even failed to do things right– but because you simply are not a good enough person, and they’ve found someone better than you. That, my friends, is a hard pill to swallow.
As much crap as I deal with from alcoholics, I have to feel a little bit owed this.
Until today, I didn’t think it was possible to screw up Chinese food that badly, but I guess they’ve developed the technology to do it. Seriously, I’m talking about some hard core Mystery Meat.
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I also draw most of my comics at work. I drew this one yesterday and another one tonight (the next one is so not going to be late). Pretty much all the problems with my job come from customers, and most of the customers that cause said problems are the alcoholic ones. I’d estimate that about ten percent of the customers I get in a night are alcoholics. I have long since stopped dealing with their crap, which they give freely, openly, and in great quantity, almost without exception. Earlier tonight, for example, a lady came in (an alcoholic lady) and tried to buy a tallboy of Steel Reserve with pennies. I told her that the pennies needed to be rolled or I wasn’t taking them. It’s not that I couldn’t have counted them, but if you take pennies from an alcoholic, they’re going to keep coming back and buying booze with more pennies and you’re going to end up counting pennies all night every night. Best to set certain standards straight out of the gate. Anyway, she threw a fit, telling me that it was illegal to not take her money and that I was obligated to sell her the beer. For the rest of my life I will regret not asking her, at this point, which law firm she worked for. Instead, I told her to call the police. Then, I corrected myself. “I’m pretty sure you don’t have a phone,” I said, adding that, “There is no way you will spend fifty cents on a payphone when you could spend it on booze instead.” Unfortunately, she did not simply accept the realities of the situation and leave. She just threw more of a fit, insisting that denying her the beer was illegal. I then informed her that I had the right to deny any sale for any reason, and that it was, in fact, illegal to sell alcohol to an intoxicated person (although I do usually overlook it). She continued being pissy after that and eventually left. Regardless, that is the kind of crap I have to deal with at work. It’s what keeps my job from crossing the line between what it is and what I’d like it to be. But, what the hell. It’s not like I’d get any comics done at any other job. So I will deal with it for you. For you.
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