Get out your rulers, everyone, we're gonna see whose sense of self is bigger.

I just got off the phone with JH, the ex.

He called me, and was so flippant, telling me his life was great and he's doing all these great things and then he told me he wants to be friends or whatever, as if that's okay. I tried to pretend it was okay, to pretend that I didn't care at all and that I was just fine, and I told him about all the great things I've been up to lately. I was detached and cool. Steely, even. Really I just don't want him to know anything about me or how hard this has all been for me, to give up the ease and convenience and comfort of my life as a woman defined by the man to whom I was attached.

Unfortunately for my ego, somewhere along the way, something he said just made me pop. And I cried and told him all about my growing pains and how overwhelming it is to have all this amorphous, abstract, amazing, artistic....stuff...inside me and how overwhelming it is to find an outlet in this place where so much is happening all the time. My pride has been scarred indefinitely. He knows that he's better off than I am, and justice has not been served. I am the wronged one! I am the better person! I should be better off, and if I am not, he at least should never know!

Why it has to be a race to see who can self-actualize faster, I just don't know. It's probably got something to do with my self-actualization having been stifled so long by my inability to break free from my relationship with him. Whatever the case, I know I am better off without him, and in the long run, I know that I will move on with my life, and that he will become a shadow in my past. I just wish that he'd called me then and not in the middle of my near-desperate struggle to get over it all.

At least he was very gracious about it. He always was really good at making me feel better... Even so, his ideal of being friends will never happen. We're done.