Breaking Up and Breaking Bad

Do you ever lie to make your life sound more interesting? Or not even more interesting, just like, less sad? Me too! All the time. It’s an absolute treat that you can just present a story from your head as facts and people will believe you. Incredible innovation and a true testament to the resilient spirit of cowards.

I went through a break up several years ago. It was pretty bad. We lived together and the great thing about breaking up with someone you live with is that you both live there! Nobody leaves. You just sit. With your sadness. And the person who directly caused it.

So we had kind of talked everything through, said all we needed to say, decided who got which cat and now we were just sitting, on separate couches, quietly sobbing. After a few moments of this torture he turned to me and said “so...you wanna watch Breaking Bad?”

And when I told people this story, I was like “are you fucking kidding me?! No, I do not want to watch Breaking Bad with you. Get the fuck out!” Alt Reality Mary was flipping tables, breaking shit, truly raging.

But in actual reality when he turned to me and said “so...you wanna watch Breaking Bad?”  I just sniffed and said “sure.” Then we sat in silence watching a tortoise walk around with a human head on it’s back while I quietly took stock of which pieces of furniture were mine and what new things I would need to buy.

I never watched Breaking Bad again after that day and I never will. Let me guess, he dies? Of course he dies. He had cancer and was living a very dangerous lifestyle. It was truly just a race to see what would kill him first. My ex and I ended up moving to the same neighbourhood. The day we moved out he asked if I wanted to share a cab to our new apartments and I told him “If I’ve learned anything from this experience, it’s that sharing things with you only ends in heartbreak.”*

*”Okay.”