what?!

I wasn't going to blog about this at first, but it's been bugging me like crazy. so, i decided to go ahead and blog about it and get the emotions out. so, the other night, i started following CO on Twitter. (for those of you who don't know, CO is a guy I "dated" for a while). the main reasons i decided to look him up was because a) he'd basically fallen off the face of the Earth. in the course of the "relationship," he stopped responding to texts, e-mails, phone calls, etc. coincidentally, this was right around the time that JE came into the picture. so, you know, i moved on to greener pastures and b) deep down, a part of me wanted an explanation AND apology for his lack of participation in the "relationship." anyway, i start following him, and shortly thereafter he @ replies me and asks how i like  Austin and says we should talk and tells me to DM (direct message) him my number. i pause at being told to give him my number. as you can imagine, i do NOT like for anyone to tell me what to do unless they are responsible for my paycheck. at any rate, i give it to him because like i said, i wanted some questions answered.

he calls me and we talk for an hour or so. in the course of the conversation, he tells me that in his last semester of law school (last May), his room mate and friend from college had fallen gravely ill. apparently his lung collapsed and CO ended up taking care of him because his family wasn't able to do so. he said that he missed most of his classes, and was also teaching his friend all he needed to know for his law classes. his friend eventually got better and they graduated from law school. then, he got a call from his step mother that his father was sick with lung cancer and so he decided to go home to GA to help take care of him. to make a long story short, his father got very, very sick and unfortunately he passed away this May. his mother also passed away several years ago (also from lung cancer, if memory serves me correctly). needless to say, he's had a pretty shitty year and a half. he'd also shut himself off from most of his friends and only recently has he been talking to friends again. as we're talking, i feel really bad for him because the pain of losing a parent is indescribable. he and his dad weren't on good terms, but it's still awful to lose your only remaining parent and from what he told me, in a long and painful process. he said, and i completely agreed, that he was going to need to go counseling at some point to address everything that went on.

in the course of the conversation, though, the asshole in him reared it's ugly head. (to be fair, i think we can all be assholes at times, but it's always not the sum of who we are.) at one point he had the audacity to say that he'd been a good boyfriend. i swear to God, i almost hung on him right then and there. he said, yeah, we didn't talk nearly as much as we should have, but when we did talk, i was a good boyfriend. then he started to list the times he listened to me talk about various things. all the while, i'm thinking, uhm, isn't that what you're supposed to do when you're dating someone?! furthermore, isn't being a good boyfriend about the sum total, not the individual instances? that's like saying i have a good man because he only slapped me twice. what.the.hell?! we discussed his lack of communication and he said, "All you had to do was tell me that you loved me and I..." I didn't even allow him to finish the sentence because I didn't want to hear whatever he had to say. from what i gathered, he expected something for nothing. you know, as we were talking, i kept asking myself why i even wasted my time "dating" him. He asked me about the man i was dating now (I didn't offer this information, he just assumed i was seeing someone else.) he then said something to the effect that the communication thing was something i didn't have to deal with my new man and when i confirmed this was the case (i didn't share that we live together), he said, "See, so it all worked out." Soooo... you mean to tell me it was ok for you to be lacking because i eventually found someone who was not. smh... that's some bullshit, for sure.

back in the spring, when things were not going financially well for JE, he asked me if i'd ever get back with CO. (he knew that he was a law school graduate and at the time, i assumed he'd taken and passed the bar and was practicing law. turns out he took the bar this May, but due to what was going on with his family, failed it. so, he's taking it next year.) i assured him that i wasn't the least bit interested in getting back with CO. i truly meant it at the time, but that conversation with CO a few nights ago just solidified my feelings. to be fair, CO has some good guy tendencies. unfortunately, he doesn't translate them into good boyfriend tendencies. people treat you the way you allow them to treat you and so a part of the blame falls on me for putting up with such foolishness. what killed me was when he said he wasn't dating anyone because he didn't have anything to offer given everything that had been going on. so, wait, you can recognize that now, but you couldn't recognize that when we were together? uhm, ok. then i got to wondering how he got to the point where he thought his behavior was alright? (given what went on with his room mate and father, i'm not mad that he went AWOL, but i am disappointed about the time prior to that.) deep down, i think he feels that because he's an educated, intelligent, drug free, childless Black male that he's entitled to do whatever and a woman should just accept it because he's a "good catch." and the thing is, once he decides to start dating someone again, he'll have no problem (especially in Atlanta) finding a woman willing to put up with his diva tendencies. also, i have to take into account the age factor, which i normally don't like to do since people routinely marginalize me because i'm young(er). CO is 25, soon to be 26 (his birthday's a week or so after mine). and we began dating when he was 21. and i know, for a fact that he hasn't dated a lot of people. so, hopefully he'll live, learn, and grow up.

ok, i got it off my chest. until next time...