Random Texts from the Ex

I’ve heard people talk about receiving the ‘random text’ from an ex, or even someone you went on a date with once or twice and never heard from again.  I’ve also received random texts from the guy I went on a date once, who only text me on holidays at closing time at the bar. (I haven’t gotten one of those since I moved.)   I do think it’s amusing when you receive a random text, I mean completely random, not sent on a date with symbolic or historical meaning from the person in that past relationship.  Not sent because you were two freight ships passing by and looking the other way, not sent because he’s Facebook stalking me (I assume).  Completely random on a Friday night, without any meaning to me at least, not having spoken to each other in about 3 + years – just random.  So I will use this opportunity to tell you, my readers exactly what happened. J

I had just finished playing a co-ed softball game on Friday night, walking back to my car my phone text message alert goes off, I think it’s my boyfriend but no…it’s my ex-husband.  Out of the blue, completely random he sends me a text.  At first it made no sense to me since we haven’t spoken in 3+ years AND it wasn’t a symbolic or historic date in our past relationship.  Obviously something must have triggered a memory or triggered me to his memory, but something prompted him to send me a random text.  Seems even after all these years he still has no idea what the true reason for our divorce was or stemmed from.  I wasn’t about to respond back with the list of the series of events that led us down that path to remind him.  I wasn’t about to start hashing out the past.  It’s the past, I’ve moved on and he should too.

I can’t say I’ve ever written this way before about what happened to that relationship, other than I wasn’t number 1 as every wife thinks they will be once they put a ring on it.  I can’t say I’ve ever felt so angry before either, how this text made me so mad, mad at the fact that he hasn’t moved on and that he consumed a portion of my Friday night.  Then I laughed, I laughed pretty hard actually.  So I write, because now I feel better knowing that at least in the virtual world I have closure to what the dry ink says on paper.  A chunk of my life is gone, it’s in the past, it had its great times and it had its ending.  Knowing that in my current life, my happiness is what matters, my life is complete now and I’ve moved on and have grown up from the random texts (but they still make pretty good stories).

Surviving the Big D: My Photo Albums

Yes this deserves a mention, because had I known I would have taken them with me.  In the midst of the separation, his parents moved into the Dream House while their new retirement residence was being built, and also sometime that year or the year after (since it took over a year to finally get divorced) he was storing his friends things at the Dream House.  Somehow my photoalbums went missing.  Years of my childhood, pictures of friends at the beach, softball, pool parties at my house in Carteret, parties at the apartment in Edison, my head in the trash can after a New Years Eve party, pictures of my sister and I at Halloween, how my mom dressed us in similar outfits at the holidays, pictures of my Great Aunts and Uncle Mickey, my Grandmothers and my Grandfathers left behind and now are missing.  Some of the last pictures taken with my father before he passed away are somewhere in that Dream House, especially a picture of him that I recall from my wedding where he just looked so GQ, my Dad all dressed up in a tux.  They are albums in a brown box, probably with the word ‘PHOTOS’ on all four sides somewhere in that house unless he tossed them or his parents took them with them OR his friend accidentally moved it out with his things.

 

I’m still angry, I still don’t know why someone would want to hold onto my photos, photos from before his time.  Photos that he wasn’t apart of.  Photos that mean something to me.  I’ve stopped calling and texting for them back, at the time the refinance was more important (even that took 5 years after the D), but now I’m still angry, I think I always will be angry. 

I’m angry that I lost part of time in photos, that I can never show my niece and nephew pictures of their Grandfather, their Great Grandmother and Great Great Aunts and Uncle.  I can’t show them what it was like back then, I can only tell stories of the past.  I’m angry that they were never returned to me.

Yet I learn now that when I leave a relationship even if its for a temporary ‘break’ take everything with me, leave nothing behind because the person you once trusted for all those years is mostlikely not trusting with your things.