Breakup in Revolt

When you breakup with someone you're left with a heaping pile of nasty side effects.  For one, you have to sleep alone.  Actually, I quite like that.  More room to toss and turn, not to mention my cat appreciates the expansion of her down property.  Then there's the ache of never seeing the other's family, again.  And for a girl with a rather small family, I always feel the downsizing.  Sometimes, when the breakup is a doozy, you even lose friends as they sheepishly (or vehemently) choose battle lines.  Then, of course, when you live with the one you love you have to divide your stuff.  I actually have a friend who lost an entire hybrid car in that debacle. 

This time around, however, there is one small effect of my breakup that is nagging me above any of these more acute, life altering consequences.  Right before we moved back to California, as my ex and I were going through what to take and what to give away, I was talked into getting rid of my copy of C.D. Payne's "Youth In Revolt."  I looked at it longingly, its 499 pages and cheerful turquoise cover full of whimsical cartoons begging me not to let it go.  When I first read the book in high school I hadn't discovered something so wonderful since I tried my first chocolate croissant from La Bou.  I rarely hang onto books I've already read, but there was something special about this novel that said to me, "Blackheart, keep me on your shelf.  I'm a reflection of your inner self.  People will see me there and know instantly that you're a cool, angst ridden chick."  "OK," I would reply to my paperback friend with each and every move, from that first college dorm to my current home in Nashville.  "For you, anything.  Hop in this Pabst Blue Ribbon box I scavenged from behind the 7-Eleven and hold tight!" 

But now, its thickness and weight was creating a schism in our relationship.  It was too big.  Too bulky.  It had to go.  For the first time in 11 years, it wouldn't make the cut.  So reluctantly I compromised,  setting it delicately on the Salvation Army pile and asking Nick Twisp (the protagonist) to please forgive me.  But my heart ached.  I had told myself I would always keep it.  A book to give my fictional children one day to show them how interesting and hip their mother actually was at one time, long long ago.  I hauled it to the charity drop-off and watched as two burly men brutally tossed it into a metal cage full of yellowed, trashy romance novels and sad looking childrens' books that made "Revolt" look like a bright shining literary star. 

One month later, and I had not only lost one of my oldest, dearest books, but I'd lost my man, as well.  But the book, oh the book!  How it pains me.  So here's the possible lessons learned: 1.) Compromise sucks; 2.) The Salvation Army participates in book cruelty; and 3.) If he's the right one, the things you love will somehow find a way into the moving box.