Delayed Reaction

So I talked to my ex earlier this week.  The ex that was the subject of the very breakup that sparked this blog.  The one I spent months missing, thinking about...whitewashing the memories. 

He'd contacted me last week on my birthday to say "Happy birthday" via text.  Because I am a dumbass, I asked "Can we be friends yet? :-)"  I put that effing smiley in there to lighten it up, but I  did mean it.  I don't know why.  He replied "I don't think my girl would like that."  So I replied, "No worries!  Thanks for the birthday wishes, take care!"

So that was that.  Or so I thought.  Then on Monday I got an email from him:
I hope you had a great birthday - I would like to be friends with you.  I miss you terribly.  I guess when you asked me on Friday I wanted to be mean because I was/am so hurt by everything that's been going on.  If there is a way to be friends I'd really like to figure that out because you were and are my best friend and I really miss talking to you.  I hope you had a great time this past weekend.

Yeah, I copied and pasted it.  So what.  The bastard doesn't merit any privacy anymore with me.

I told him I wanted to be friends, but I didn't know how to start.  He said:
I don't have any ideas and I have no clue how to start.  I think it will go fine for a bit then one of us will ask about the others boyfriend/girlfriend and get their feelings hurt.  I'm dating someone else but I think about you.  :(  It sucks to admit that but I still think about you all the time.  I don't know.  Maybe not a good idea.

I told him I understood, and that if it were an issue we shouldn't bother.  He said:
You were ready to move on I wasn't.

We continued chitchatting, though, and then I got an email from him telling me that he'd been swimming a lot, and had lost his belly fat.  He also mentioned his new car, and then attached two pictures.  The first was of the aforementioned car.  The second was of him, standing in front of his bathroom mirror with no clothes on, taking a picture of himself with one hand and with his other hand covering his junk.  It was cut off just in time to avoid being indecent, but I could see the top of the hand on his package, and I opened that thing at work.  :-/

I pointed out the level of decency of the picture and he said something about how "oops, should have cropped that, but it's nothing you haven't seen, anyway."

He then said:
I think we should have another roll in the hay for old times sake :) 

AND THEN, the cherry on the asshole sundae:
i'd have to use a condom with you now cause you're tainted.

The most amazing thing about that?  I didn't even get that upset when he said it at the time.  I blew it off like a joke, saying "Are you kidding me?  You're the one with the girlfriend."  Then I actually kept chatting with the asshole. 

It was only the next day that something clicked, and I started getting pissed.  And more pissed.  And more pissed.  And then I was just FU very much angry.

What a hypocrite.  What an asshole.  What a singular waste of time and effort and love and devotion on my part.  Sometimes the facade that we've worked so hard to hold up for someone we invested ourselves in, it just falls like dead weight, and it shatters so resoundingly that there is no way to repair it.  Well, he finally fell, and he went down hard. 

I realized that in 15 minutes of talking to this ex, I came out of the conversation feeling like absolute shit again.  Something about his presence in my life, even in the tiniest of ways, makes me feel so vastly insecure.  And the emotional abuse continues, even when we're not together...that's right, asshole.  Tell me how much you miss me, how I'm your best friend, and then imply that I'm a big dirty whore. 

I kept him blocked on chat.  I blocked him on Facebook.  I set up a filter on my email to send anything from him straight to the trash, and while doing all of these things, I watched the last justifications, rationalizations, and delusions I'd been holding onto in a very secret, dark place go swirling down with it. 

FU very much, ex.  No one is allowed to talk to me like I'm garbage.  No one is allowed to question my character or judge me like that.  No one is allowed to mindfuck me like that anymore.

If I'm tainted by anything in my life, it's by the time I spent with him, and I'm washing that off in waves, and I'm not looking back this time.