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Running Into the Ex at the Post Office

Just when I think my life is going fabulously well as a happily single, temporarily celibate woman (as my positive thinking goes), my innocent check of the Blackberry in the post office lobby turns into a "run-in" with the ex.

"You're always on the phone every time I see you," I hear someone whisper softly into my left ear.  I looked up, and there he was:  the man whom shall remain nameless who broke me down, ripped my heart out of my chest, made me cry, and activated a previously dormant stalking gene in me which I have worked at great lengths to remove (or at least curb until the next trigger).  Yes.  This man drove me so crazy that I even stalked him one night, sitting on the steps of a brownstone diagonally across from his apartment building, just waiting for "her" to walk outside of the door (whoever "she" was).  She never did walk out, neither did he, but that hot summer night I walked away realizing that I had gone so crazy as to have my first and hopefully last stalker attempt at trying to catch someone in the act of doing God knows what. 

"Oh my God, hi!" I say, sincerely surprised, but not so sincerely happy to have run into this fellow.  I must have been naive to believe that it was highly unlikely for me to run into him at his neighborhood post office, smack dab in the middle of a prime lunch visitation hour in the middle of Midtown Manhattan. 

"How are you?!"  he asks.

"I'm doing really well, thanks.  How are you?" I say with a smile, acting as a radiantly happy woman would.

"I'm great.  I just...." and the recording goes on autopilot.  As he lists his litany of current accomplishments and potentially lucrative business deals, I sigh a silent, inner sigh, thanking whatever divinity is out there that I am free from this jerk and can laugh about it. 

How is it that at a time in our lives we can believe that we are so in love, or at least totally in lust and infatuated with someone, that we lose all sense of ourselves?  I look back on that hot summer night when I stooped so low as to stalk this guy, hoping to confront him and this possible mistress, not knowing what I would say or do, but having this uncontrollable desire to spew my anger and fury onto both of them.  That was almost six years ago.  But I can feel the beads of sweat on my forehead as if it were last night.  It's amazing how much can change in just a few short years, how totally different and transformed we can become if we learn to work through our pain.

"Well, it was great running into you," I say with a smile, after the superficial pleasantries and life updates were exchanged in the lobby.  I can't believe I gave him my number when he asked for it.  Why doesn't that jerk still have it programmed into his cell phone?  I hope he doesn't call.  I wish I had the courage to say "no" when he asked for my number instead of trying to be polite.  I wish I could have said "yes" honestly when he asked me if I got married.  Oh well.  The most important thing is that I truly am happy being single, free from any "men" drama, at least for now.  And even more importantly than that most important thing, I am so happy with who I have evolved to become:  A woman who will NEVER AGAIN be with a man like that, and a woman who knows she deserves nothing less than the best.  Even if she does try to be polite when she doesn't have to be.