*with the Person Who Dumped You.
You get an email from your ex-whatever-it-was-you-two-were-exactly, asking to meet for lunch. The tone of the mail is friendly, casual, if a bit stiff. You agree in a friendly, casual, if a bit stiff email of your own, and a date is set. But what kind of lunch will it be? Hold your breath and SPIN! THAT! WHEEL!
The No-Hard-Feelings-Lunch
This is probably the best-case scenario. You can be friends again and put all the ugliness behind you. “You and me, we are okay, right?” You will agree that whatever it was that you had was nice, for what it was, but the timing was bad, you wanted different things, you are two different people, after all; it was “Just One of Those Things,” as Tony Bennett sang. You will offer each other weak declarations that there are no bad guys here (because there aren’t, not really) and half-hearted promises that you are not reviled by each other’s friends, that there haven’t been long, heated conversations about how much you suck. Most important, though, is the unspoken understanding that both of you are people – weak- wounded, fragile, forgivable people doing the very best you can under the impossible circumstances that is day-to-day existence.
In the great grand scheme of things, this is nothing, this wound- it’s a nick of a razor, a scrape of the knee – and if you say it enough times and with enough intensity and smile wider each time you say it, you can even convince yourselves. After all, what were you hoping for, really? What was this ever going to be, realistically? Isn’t this the best thing that could have possibly happened, for it to have ended now before somebody really got hurt? This is much better. This makes sense. Everything’s fine you can assure each other and yourselves. Everything will always be fine.
The Loaded-Weapon Lunch
Are you prepared for this? Do you have a list, with bullets, ready to go? The breakup was abrupt. Maybe you didn’t say everything you wanted to say to each other; maybe now, with time, you have started to realize all the ways in which you were wronged. I hope you are crafting the righteous indignation in your head, shaping it, sculpturing it. What’s the sharpest turn of phrase, the cruellest, fastest way to draw blood? When the sparring begins, hang back, float like a butterfly, let your opponent use up all the good material, and then strike. Remember, the one who laughs last laughs longest, so make sure you laugh last and when you do you laugh heartily but with a detached air none-of-this-really-matters-I-haven’t-been-lying-awake-at-night-staring-at-the-ceiling-regurgitating-all-this-pain coolness. This lunch will decide once and for all who is the winner and who is the loser of this breakup. This is the moment you have been trained for, the reckoning where at long last justice will be had. The crowd roars. The judge pounds the gavel. O, Glorious Retribution, how sweet thy taste, how bitter thy sting. This will not be pleasant, this lunch, and you will both feel terrible afterwards – it will not at all provide the closure either of you had hoped for – but if there is a silver lining here (and you are not sure there is one), it is the assurance that what you had, whatever it was, had weight. It made an impact. You can put to rest the fear that you were a blip in this other person’s life, a footnote. What you did was important. You hurt somebody, and somebody hurt you.
The Reconciliation Lunch
The Tail-Between-the-Legs Apology Lunch. The Tearful I-Miss.You-I-Made-a-Horrible-Mistake-Can-We-Please-Get-Back-Together-Lunch. It is probably isn’t this, but you should maybe have a plan just in case. Because if it is this, if your former lover has indeed decided that the wasteland that was your relationship is more attractive than the wasteland that is being alone, you have a couple of options and you should consider them both ahead of time. Option A is yes, yes, yes. You can attack that yes with desperate vigour, charge blindly, romantically, hysterically into yes. Take a match to your pride, turn back the clock and pretend this breakup never occurred. You were fools, both of you – you were different people then, you were children. You can make it work this time, because now you will know what it is you could have lost. You are really going to try this time, you swear it, this time you will do everything not in shades of beige and grey but in bold, brilliant, beautiful COLOR.
But then again, maybe you have done a lot of thinking since your split. Maybe you have seen the foolishness of throwing yourself so recklessly headlong into the fray that is this other person. Maybe this was just the splash of cold water that you needed. I mean, let’s be realistic, after all. This is the question and you should have a plan: Do you welcome back love with open arms, or do you, under the auspices of rational thinking, break this person’s heart, like this person broke yours? You should have a plan, but don’t get your hopes up. The lunch probably isn’t going to be this. There are a lot of things this lunch can be, but it almost certainly isn’t this.
The For-Old-Times’-Sake Lunch
If you meet for lunch near one of your apartments, your meal might be a prelude to one more roll in the hay. You know, for old times’ sake. You know, for the sake of the old times. All those old times that would be really disappointing if you didn’t fool around again, you owe it to them. This isn’t a reconciliation, and don’t fool yourself into thinking this is closure. It’s something in the middle. Is it even something? Perhaps, in the loosest sense of the word “something.” It’s not quite something but slightly more than nothing, this.
It’s like a movie adaption of your favourite novel, a theme park ride version of your favourite movie. It’s a shadow of a ghost. It’s gluten-free pasta. But at least it’s pasta.
The Here’s-Your-Stuff-Back Lunch
What more is there to say? The world, it turns out, has continued to exist. The waters have receded. The fires turned to ash. You knew this day would come, but you didn’t want to believe it. The scars have healed, the universe has cooled, the porcupine that is your cautious heart has uncurled itself, put away its quills, and continued on in whatever random direction it was headed. And a sweater has been sitting in someone else’s closet, a barely there reminder of nothing much really.
You had every intention of being depressed forever, but as it turns out, there’s work to be done, meals to eat, movies to see, and errands to run. You meant to be in ruins permanently, your misery a monument, a gash across the cold hard earth, but honestly, who has the time for that? Instead, you survived – apparently; you both did – and things are shockingly okay. But a sweater has been sitting in someone else’s closet. A book perhaps, or a knitted winter cap. The memory of whatever spark you had is rusted, corroded, hardly maintained, and scarcely revisited. This was no great affair, this thing. This was no tragic heartbreak. This was just another thing that happened in a long series of things that happened. Here’s your stuff back. Have a nice life.
