A hard pill to swallow

This is a post from a now defunct comic journal by Matt Milby. I know a lot of you can relate to this. I know I did.

This is not the way you want to be broken up with. You do not want your girlfriend to break up with you out of the blue and leave you to find out that she did so from Katie at the bar. It is a really shitty way to get broken up with.

Anyway, it’s been a rough past couple of days for me. This isn’t the first time I’ve been broken up with, but it is the first time I’ve been left for someone else. If you’ve never had that experience yourself, let me tell you, it is everything they say it is.

It might have been easier to deal with if things weren’t going well, but that wasn’t the case. I’ve heard no argument from her about that, either. I was in love with her (I do wish I’d told her), and she said she loved me. That’s what makes this so hopelessly demoralizing. If there had been fights, problems, disagreements, that would have been understandable. If she thought I’d been a dick, that would have been understandable. But when things are going as well as you can imagine, and when you’re doing the best you can– being the best you can– and you still aren’t good enough for them, what does it say? That your best isn’t good enough. That you’re inadequate. That there was nothing you could have done to avoid being left– not because you did any specific thing wrong, or even failed to do things right– but because you simply are not a good enough person, and they’ve found someone better than you. That, my friends, is a hard pill to swallow.