The End of the Affair

No longer, friend.

He left me.

At the first sign of trouble in our relationship, he found a new trollop to give him affection and put him up on a pedestal.

And I am still too shocked to be in the grieving stage. I just…well, I can’t process the agony quite yet.

Though I haven’t mentioned it in the blog as yet, there are changes on my horizon. And incredible new job opportunity has been presented to me that I could not be more excited about. It has everything: good mission, exciting research, work with local officials and the school board, and an amazing staff that I will have the pleasure to work with daily.

But, when I accepted this career-altering position I forgot something—and I will boldly make the comparison to realizing as a college student abroad that you have to come home one day—and that is that I cannot take everyone with me on my new journey. Some must stay behind. They are simply characters in a closed chapter of our lives.

And so I have to say goodbye to Don Expo. [Read our story here]

It was sudden. It was a typical office morning and a co-worker stopped by to ask about my new job, catch up, and tell me about the availability of cookies in the conference room, and so on. Then she said it. Out of nowhere.

“So, would it be ok if I took the expo board? I need something as a doorway for my cube.” 

“Uh…Oh. Well, I can ask him?”“What do you mean ask him?”

[Insert embarrassing moment where your co-worker realizes you are actually hesitant to share expo board rights. Work property be damned. This guy is YOURS. But you seek to hastily correct the blunder…]

“No, no! I will have him cleaned off and over there in a few minutes!”

At which point I scramble to clean him with alcohol pads—which is beneath his dignity—and roll his 6 foot beautiful form to the other side of the building. I stared deep into his white reflective surface before walking away. And as all girls know, any decent expo board would have found his way back to me.

But he DID NOT.

He stayed there. He likes his new home. It does not matter to me that I have a shorter, stockier white board at home, who is loyal and followed me across multiple jobs. No, I am certain to mourn the loss of the robust, tall and mobile Don Expo with which I kept a relationship on the side at work. Girls, let this be a lesson: be loyal to ONE of everything. Whether a man, your favorite white board, or your Russian Red MAC © Lipstick. 

Courtesy of a dear friend and colleague (who admittedly stole this from last season’s The Bachelor): Good things don’t end, unless they end badly.  I wanted us to find a resolution—and in typical, delusional female fashion, I imagined we could find a way to bridge the long-distance gap. But alas, it is not to be.

This break up will be a tough one folks. Even the red lipstick isn’t cheering me up.