Denial. Such a lovely, graphic little adjective, isn’t it? I must say, for a word that mostly is inherent in men refusing to see a doctor when they’re bleeding to death, I seem to be doing it very well.

I have been shoving it up your noses from day dot-“trust the gut” I yelled, “vote gut for President” I preached, yada yada yada. Snore. Do as I say, not as I do.

I stand up and raise my hand, I am guilty as charged. A recreational denial user…

You know the drill by now. He was awesome, attractive, sexy, suave, complicated, just the right amount of disinterested. For that most important chunk of time, he’s involved, romantic, attentive, you know, completely persuasive of his capability to be The Boyfriend Who Puts All Before Him To Shame.

Its not so much the sound of a penny dropping all of a sudden but a gradual, slow-motion view of the vase falling from the table and having enough time to make a choice whether to try catch it or not.

He stops calling to see how your day is, telling you you look hot before you go out (that’s if you can actually *get* him to go out), bringing you flowers and hangs back on the soppy declarations of endearment… He used to love sitting with you for hours just shooting the breeze and even used to love painting your toes. Now you’d be lucky to get him to take the garbage out after asking him 5 times.

Then I find myself sitting across the table from him at a candlelit dinner with nothing to say and trying to figure out exactly *what* I found so attractive about him before. His teeth are skew and his receding hairline is shockingly distracting, and I feel a deep burning desire to tell the buxom waitress that he is ogling that he picks his nose and inspects it.

I hate this. I hate it so much that it takes every ounce of willpower I have to stay seated at that goddamn table in the restaurant and not bolt like a wild horse.

That silence on the drive home. That eerie quiet when you both get ready for sleep and end up on opposite sides of the bed. You haven’t had a fight… so what is it?

This is when you know It Just Isn’t Working. Maybe We Should Have a Break. Maybe We Should Start Seeing Other People… things you wish you knew when you decided to move in together and adopt a goldfish from the SPCA. Things your horoscopes just don’t fucking tell you.

Thing is, it’s not *really* a surprise now is it? Try as one might, you can’t really sit around the table with your girlfriends and complain to all hell that it’s all HIS fault with a clear conscience… Because why? Because if you’d just tuned in, you’d have heard the tiny little windchimes become a fire alarm.

The rubber dinghy was sinking fast and all I seemed to be capable of doing was describing the wonderful breeze coming off the island wayyyy up ahead.

Not this time, skippy. Whilst trootling merrily into love, when he said something really inappropriately douchebag-y about someone I care about, I heard the windchime. I wrote a mental post-it. Then, when he didn’t contact me for days and I seriously considered filing a missing persons report, I allowed my ears to listen to the bicycle bell saying “Run.Now.” I’m not going to sit around and wait for the incrementally ascending volume of the warning signs I should be heeding.

Time stands still for no man, and, it would seem, neither do I.