“Well after you left, there are some things I never did again,” I said. “I maintained this sort of bizarre loyalty to you.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Well for one thing, I never dated anyone in the military again.”

“No?”

“No. I never even came close. I just couldn’t see it. I knew it would be… bizarre. Like what am I going to do? One soldier is gone, so just plug in another?”

He laughed.

“Yeah. I may have been young but I was way too sophisticated for that. I actually thought this through. It was conscious. I sat there one day and figured this out. I was trying to over you, see.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, the time came where I had to actually sit down and figure out how I was going to do that because it just went on so long. I was just in pain and it wasn’t going anywhere. It wasn’t moving or changing. See, I didn’t go off half-cocked after you left. I knew I had a serious thing to get over. Unlike you who skipped off and got married,” I said, smirking to myself. “So one day I sat down and came to terms with this. They’ll be no more military men for you, Elsa.”

“No more, huh?”

“No. If I wasn’t going to go with you, then I was not going to go with a substitute you.”

“Makes sense.”

“Yeah it did. I was smart back then. Smarter than I am now.”

He laughed.

“Yeah it’s funny but I also think it’s unfortunately true. But anyway, it wasn’t so hard. I was never keen on the military. I have no men-in-uniforms thing going so I just told myself never again. Because just think about it. What if I was sleeping with some military guy? He’d get up in the morning and then what? He’d put on his shoes! Military shoes. So there he’s be sitting there on the edge of the bed putting on his shiny shoes, and how in the world would I be able to see that and not think of you?”

“Probably couldn’t. You’d think of me for sure.”

“Yeah. And I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to think of you. I wanted to not think of you. Because you were gone and you were someone else’s husband, even. So I seriously… well, once I knew that, I just wanted to forget you as fast and as well as I could.”

“I understand.”

“Yeah. So I sat down on the couch there and asked myself what I was going to do. You know. You have a serious problem and you had better decide if you are going to survive it or not. Are you going to get over him? Or not? Are you going to live? Or die? See, I actually had to go into survival mode.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Nah. It’s okay. I’m just telling you it came to this point. You had been gone for months and I had been waiting for you to come back or for me not to not care, or to feel better or something but it was not happening. Nothing was happening. I felt as crappy six months after you left as I did on the day you left. Perhaps even worse, so you know. I finally had to stop everything I was doing and sit down and face this head on.”

“Yeah, I understand how that is.”

“Right. So I sat just me, thinking in my head about what I ought to do and one of the things I decided is I would never date anyone in the service again for as long as I lived. You know. Drama. As long as I live! But really, I play cards. I don’t think you know that, but I play cards and I think in cards.”

“You do? You think in cards?”

“Yeah. And I decided the idea of me with a man in the military was a card that had done been played. Bad hand. Um… discard pile, see? Give it up. It’s over. I played the hand, I lost the hand. The hand is over, so new hand. Fresh cards. And you know what?”

“What?”

“Well I lost so badly, I guess I never wanted to see a hand like that again. You know. No more cards that come with shiny shoes in my bedroom on them. No more cards with military men on them, not now and not later. I decided as long as I never saw shoes like that again, I could find a way to be okay.”

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Have you ever purged a whole section of life just to get over a lost love?