Op-Ed
Chicken Soup for the Wounded Pride
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Awkward Turtle
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“So, I guess I’ll see you around?”
No … you um, you just broke up with me. And I wasn’t even sure we were actually dating. I felt like P. Diddy getting voted out of the band. Hold the phone — wasn’t I the one running this show?
I snapped my cell shut, more shocked, confuse and disappointed than the first time I found out the guy who sang “Never Gonna Give You Up” was a pasty, redheaded teenager. I just got dumped for the first time ever, and I had no idea how to respond. How was I supposed to deal with this? Think Shannan, what would Streetfighter do?
OK, so my usual approach doesn’t work here. Let’s rephrase: what do females outside of Juvi do in this situation? I’ve always had this image of the dumped girl: mascara-streaked and bitter, wearing a white undershirt stained with the remnants of a dozen glazed doughnuts and the blood of the unlucky Krispy Kreme cashier who had made the fatal mistake of asking if she was buying for a party. Cross-legged, she sits tightly clutching her dog-eared copy of He’s Just Not That Into You, bursting into tears during Proactive commercials. “Oh my god, the problem is my face!”
I sat on edge of my bed and tried to cry for, like, 10 minutes. After discovering that I have the emotional depth of Tickle Me Elmo, I called my source of all feminine wisdom: my wonderfully refined, lady-gene hogging older sister.
“Ohhh, Starry Moon!” (The name I called myself until I was nine.) “It’s OK if you cry. Go rent While You Were Sleeping and have a slumber party in your PJs and eat ice cream and … ”
I hung up. Ten minutes later, I had rallied the motley crew of boys that live downstairs and was pounding a gardening bucket’s worth of frozen vanilla fat and heavenly caramel goo to the face, while an obviously unnerved Friendly’s waitress stared from behind her register.
But I still didn’t feel sad. In fact, I felt better, stronger and more intense than ever. For the next three days, I watched in awe as Shannan 2.0 increased her bench max by 10 pounds; I was shocked when she made it rain with an stinging comeback to a lighthearted crack about her height; I had to talk her down from clotheslining an unsuspecting jogger on College Ave. It was as if I was taking a constant I.V. of Starbucks, Red Bull and creatine, and my high fives were higher and louder than ever.
When I came down from my three-day rage binge, it hit me. Being dumped didn’t make me sad; it made me angry. The thought process goes something like this: Why would he break up with me? I actually liked him! He’s an idiot! I’m freaking aweso … And then I rip off my clothes and turn into the Hulk.
The more Cornellians I talked to about it, the more I realized how common it was. The truth is many of us dumpees don’t feel betrayed or depressed; we feel duped, and pretty stupid.
We almost had ourselves convinced that monogamy in college isn’t about feeding the radiating flame of love; it’s about free rides to class and readily available “study breaks” without the risk of syphilis. We’re not finding the one, so we’re looking for the one who’s hot enough to distract us from all the things we don’t like about them. To trust in something greater is to make ourselves vulnerable, to invite a hitchhiker into our pimped out Lexus of Life. We’re perfectly fine on our own — in fact, we know we’re pretty freaking awesome. We’re so awesome that we wrote an essay about it, and that essay got us into this fine institution. Why should we — no, why did we let ourselves get attached?
When I started to actually like him, I found myself praying that he collected taxidermied pets and American Girl dolls — anything to give me an excuse to split. But he continued to be normal, and I satisfied my skepticism requirement with the concern that he was too normal, all the while subconsciously drinkin’ the Kool-Aid of Love.
We as Cornellians cling to our skepticism so tightly it almost gives us cameltoe. Relationships ask someone else to be the determining factor of our happiness, and to judge the quirks and eccentricities that our moms promised us were perfect when we were seven*. So we enter relationships reluctantly at best, using time-honored cliché excuses of “plenty of fish in the sea” or “he has a mole that I can’t quite come to terms with.” And, the truth is we are pretty freaking great, and our eccentricities are what set us apart in interviews, applications and speed dating. We should be critical of those who we allow to cause a three-day rage-fest and perhaps a brief stint in the slammer. If not, we’ll end up mascara-streaked and bitter, with only Krispy Kreme, paranoid books and a lingering assault and battery charge to keep us warm at night.
*My mom’s response to this line: “Of course I told you that you were perfect, Shannan. You looked like the guy who sang ‘Never Gonna Give You Up.’ You had enough problems.”
Shannan Scarselletta is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be contacted at sscarselletta@cornellsun.com. Awkward Turtle appears alternate Thursdays.