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Two Exes Wasted My Time. So I Sent Them Invoices.
Can the attempt to get paid by men who disappointed me deliver something bigger than healing?
Days after my 32nd birthday, I sat hunched over my computer typing feverishly into oblivion as the sky darkened outside. It was Memorial Day weekend and instead of being at someone’s barbecue drunkenly two-stepping to Earth, Wind & Fire I was drafting invoices — two invoices — to two men from my past that I had been enamored with. Invoices to reckon with the pain and anger I was feeling. The only shards that I was left with when the romance was over.
Both relationships had soured for different reasons. But sadly, each had the same, predictable end. So, I gathered up all the time I lost as my rage funneled into a foreboding and ferocious cloud. My desire was to tangibly contend with multitudes of regrets.
I filled in their names, how they could pay — my preference was PayPal because I’d get the money instantly — and proceeded to list out my gripes. I mean, line items.
And so, I typed, as the sun set, the cicadas starting to roar, and lightning bugs flitting through the heavy, humid air of yet another Southern summer in Atlanta. Using the template for what I’d otherwise invoice for written work I’d completed as a freelance writer, I filled in their names, how they could pay — my preference was PayPal because I’d get the money instantly — and proceeded to list out my gripes. I mean, line items.
Each one was like an ultimate truth being harnessed, a rebellion thrown out into the world, instead of a tight-lipped, lonely acceptance of bothersome deal breakers. There was the unending emotional labor, the flights, the Ubers and Lyfts to visit each of them out of town because we didn’t live in the same state. Sex — all the God-awful sex I’d zone out during and positions which were more painful than pleasurable. The lingering embarrassment from being dumped via email—while I was traveling internationally—from one of those men. The admittance from the other man that he wished he loved me and that he’d be fine casually dating me forever. For each invoice, I tacked on a miscellaneous fee…
