Status Symbol

Through fits and starts and many Kleenex I tell Don my whole story. He is not one for a lot of drama, but he's as kind a man as any you could work for. And I've never dumped a personal problem all over him so he owes me this one lifetime indulgence.

He tells me he thinks Scott has had a midlife crisis. (This is becoming a theme.) He thinks he'll be back, but is not sure that would be a great thing. It would depend on me. And he offers to tell me about his midlife crisis.

I tell him that I was so outside my own skin the day before I'd nearly asked him, assuming he'd had one, since it's apparent that he's not twenty anymore.

He tells me some of the outrageously out of character things he did. Things he can't believe he did. Things he's not proud of. Things he'd never do now. And the reasons he felt like doing them.

Somehow that makes me feel better. To label it. But in truth, it is only a half comfort. Men have midlife crises in many forms. Jack had his and he went out and bought a vacation home without showing it to Charlotte. And a motorcycle. She got another million in life insurance and called it resolved. Not bad for something called a crisis. But her girlfriend's husband fell in love and ran off and married a twenty year old. Obviously the crisis turned his life in another direction for good. There was not turning back from it. What if that is Scott's fate?

It is apparent that I am worthless to the office and leave early. I go home. I make plans with James and his boyfriend.

And I log onto Facebook and go to my profile.

And change my status to "single."

Messages pour in from friends and relatives I have not told. Thank God I can copy and paste the same story to each of them and not actually have to think about what to write each time. It spares me the heartache of going to that dark little place.

Comments on my page are flowing in. Words of encouragement. Compliments. My friend's husband remarks that I will only be single as long as I want to be and calls me beautiful. It is a temporary high.

And somewhere in the middle of the night, while I am drinking with James and his mate, Scott unfriends me on Facebook and proceeds to systematically unfriend all the people we have friended as a result of our relationship.

Ouch.