Memoirs of a Fat Girl

At funerals, we say goodbye. We mourn, we cry and hopefully, get the closure we need to close that chapter of our lives forever.

I’ve mourned, lord knows I’ve cried, but I really need to say goodbye and close the door on that chapter of my life forever. More than I already have, that is. That is why I am burying Jess.

Should it matter that he’s not dead?

Last year I read a book called Her Story, a compilation of short stories by women authors. In Funeral for a Live Ex-Husband, author Ellen Sommers writes of the turmoil she experienced after her husband left her for another woman, sending years of marriage and their entire way of life down the drain. Her friends got tired of her endless bitching and suggested some closure, so they had a funeral. A funeral for a man very much alive, but ceremonial in that it gave her the sense of peace she needed.

I never forgot that story. I too need a sense of peace, because there’s something I haven’t yet done. We will always be bound to each other, Jess and I, until I get rid of the one thing that ties is together. And that one thing tying us together is my hate.

I hate the man. I can’t help it. I hate the fact that he was a part of my life. I hate him for finding me and using me and treating me as badly as he did. I’m not perfect, but I don’t think I deserved that. I hate the bullshit excuses, the drugged hazes and the promises of better tomorrows. I hate how it ended, how he was never even remotely apologetic, or even thought of re-compensating me, or that six plus years of my life were wasted on the biggest jerk in the universe. I hate it all.

To get rid of that hate, I have to forgive. But, it’s not Jess I intend to forgive.

Why the hell should I forgive him? He’s an asshole of the worst kind, who landed on my life with the sole intention of making his easier. If I really forgave him, that would make everything he did okay. If I truly forgave him, it would mean that I’d have to forget. And if I forgave him, then I may as well have never broken up with him in the first place.

Jess doesn’t deserve my forgiveness, but someone else does. Me.

If there’s one person in this world that I hate more than him, it’s me. I hate that I ever looked at him. I hate that I ever started anything with him, and I hate that I gave him so much of myself. I hate that I gave him so many chances, I hate all the picked up tabs, and I really hate the hundreds of times he yelled at me until I was reduced to a blithering mess.

I hate that I thought he ever loved me, because that isn’t what love is. I hate that most of all.

I’ve been hung up on this for a long time now, that I made this mistake. This huge, unbelievable mistake that’s cost me so much time, and so many years of my life. How could I have been so stupid? Me, the girl who never took shit, falling for the biggest shit disturber around.

I’ve been thinking about it and thinking about it so much that I know I’ll never move forward, with anything, until I let this all go. I have to let it all go.

And so, it’s to the burial ground with Jess. A makeshift one anyway, because I’m pretty sure a legit corpse is required for cemetery occupation. I could only imagine his face if he knew I was doing this; he’d yell, he’d scream, he’d call me a lunatic of the worst kind and maybe even flail holy water at me. He was superstitious, that jerk.

But none of that matters, because he’s not around. What matters now is me, and which steps I take from this day on.

It’s time to bury the past.