Jejune

I dated Jejune first, and she was the first girl I ever lived with.  She was college educated, her parents were still married, no childhood trauma, a fairly well-off upbringing. 

She was into horses.  This should have been my first clue.

Towards the end, I came home from work one day and my futon was gone.  "Where's my futon," I asked?  She said she sold it.  I reminded her that it was my futon.  She said, "Huh," and walked away.  I wonder how much she got for it. 

The weekend she moved out I stayed elsewhere to avoid the final discomfort of what had become an awful environment.  When I came back a good amount of the rest of my stuff was gone.  It was kind of funny, a few years later.  

What never became funny, though, was that she slashed up one of my paintings, one that especially mattered.  This really wrecked me.  Like, really.

I'd never previously conceived that this sort of thing was possible, that people were capable of doing this.  It simply never occurred to me that a person would do this.  Aren't there rules, boundaries, limits, ethics, self respects, etiquettes, dignities, decorums, or grace? No matter how unraveled it gets, how ugly, aren't there things you just don't do?  And if I could be wrong about this person, my judgments and intuitions so askew, I could be wrong about anyone...everyone. 

 

This was my first lesson in viciousness-for viciousness sake.  This was, as it goes, the first straw.