How to Meet, Date, and Get Screwed Over By Your Bartender

I know lately that my blog posts have been someone on the more depressing side. I'm sorry. I don't intend them to be. I just start writing and whatever comes out is what comes out. This was just the latest post in a string of trying to clear my life of negative relationships, because every now and then I realize something is in a toxic relationship state, so I just let it go... so here is the latest casualty.

It'll start simple.
You'll walk up to the bar, typically when it's not a crazy Friday/Saturday night, but it might be.

He'll ask, "What'll it be."
You'll order your drink of the month, whether it's a buttery nipple, a rum and coke, or a Malibu and pineapple.
He'll smile, fix your drink, and then start up a conversation.

You'll flirt.
He'll flirt.
Sparks will be evident to everyone around you and at the end of the night when you close your tab, he'll write his phone number on your receipt, and you'll shoot him a text.

You'll go out.
He'll make you dinner.
You'll make him desert.
You'll visit him at work.
He'll visit you on your days off.
Before you know it, you have something. He'll send just the cutest text message ever or the raciest one ever, and somewhere during the year or so you've been seeing him, and somewhere between, "yeah he's nice" and "I don't think it's anything serious," and "he's just my bartender," you'll start to develop feelings.

Don't. 

When you start to develop those feelings, shit hits the fan.

You'll text him more.
He'll back off.
You'll try to see him more.
He'll blow you off.
And somewhere in between the feelings of rejection and crushdom, you'll find out you're not the only one.

How could you be?
He's a bartender. He gets girls throwing themselves at him every day for free drinks and for a little extra special attention.
Sure you'll ask the other bartenders what the deal is, and they'll protect their brethren to the last lie slipping off their tongue about how he's single and only seeing you, but his roommate - wont.

He'll show you the pictures he took of the two of them at the caps game or at the birthday party. He'll make plans with you at a bar he knows they're going to that night, and you'll meet up, and you'll see - your bartender making googly eyes across the table with some girl whose chin is so large you could land a learjet on it.

Then you'll know.
You'll know what you knew all along that it couldn't work.
That it wouldn't work.

But just because you know something in your gut all along doesn't make the hurt any less bearable. It doesn't make the pictures of flowers he sent her on his facebook any less bearable. Everything you wanted, you watch her have.
Everything you thought you had, you watch her have.

You'll feel used.
You'll feel dejected.
You'll feel like something someone once dumped in the gutter and then walked away as you slipped into the drain.

And after the cookies and the icecream, you'll set a resolve to move past it.
You'll block his number, because his texts are too persuasive to resist and you know what happens if you don't resist - more hurt, more pain.

You'll think about unblocking it.


Don't. 


Remember that hurt. Because if you resist growing and moving past what you used to have, then you'll fall into the continuous cycle of accepting being cheated on and being the other woman at the exact same time.

So instead, as you watch her take your place, slowly, as though you were just a faded memory, remember that you're better than that. It's better to be your own person with someone who treats you like you deserve.

It's better to be just somebody that he used to know.
It's better that he be just somebody that you used to know.

"Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over.

But had me believing it was always something that I'd done"

Done.