or should I say ‘NO MEN(’S) LAND.’

The planned euphoria of finishing college was exactly the opposite. I felt as though I’d been launched out onto one of the great lakes, moody and angry it was splitting and tossing me, aboard a dingy, the safe green shores a blur on the horizon. It’s the six-month break down when everything is wrong. You’ve no job, you’ve little money and less and less hope. Your life is the life of the poor creature on the St. Vincent de Paul ad. Nothing is right. and you’re vulnerable. And what’s expected of you is to take your weary self to the firing range of interview boards, of recruitment agencies, of smug secretaries who tell you that after years of grind, you don’t have what they need. That you have to sit there and let them unpick the final stitches of your ever-unravelling ego, your life in it’s present state a used ball of wool, which could be made into something if only you had the compulsion to take the time to create. He didn’t help either. A month ago he never stopped liking me. I said the nicest thing anyone had ever said to him. Why was I so nice? He made the moves. He charmed, he complimented, of course I was going to be a great teacher, and it bothered him when I implied otherwise. He was the he I had liked, I had fallen for and this shone through the cloud of moodiness, and arrogance that has settled around him of late. He assured me he hadn’t been that drunk. Just wait til the exams were over. Then we’ll see. And I did wait. I waited through the flirty texts, the teasing, the assurance that i would do well because he knew I couldn’t do any less. I was all expectant to meet him, the him of old, the nice him.
The niceties had ecplised, vanished. He was stressed, cold in manner. He looked but from the side of his lady admirer friend. I tried to convince myself that it’d be fine , that there was nothing going on when he left with her, without so much as a goodbye. I waited my turn. Afterall he’d said, ‘ after the exams….’ My messages were responded to but without warmth. He had shut down again. And so I asked. I had to. The waiting game was killing me.
‘ Don’t be massaging his ego’ I was told.
‘I care little whether I massage his ego or not. I just need to know!’
I asked. He said he didn’t. Your loss I relied.
But really, it was mine.
and it was heartfelt.