Leave The Rest Behind

2.22 

I got laid off today. That was fucking great. Just great. It was raining too so I went outside and cried in the rain and walked to Starbucks. I didn’t buy anything because I no longer had Starbucks money. I wanted to call my best friend, but we were in a fight, so I called my boyfriend. 

He told me, “Don’t worry, you can just get a new job.” I told him, “Wow, thanks for the sympathy, Kevin.” 

We talked for ten more minutes before he had to go. “Bye,” I said. “Bye,” he said. 

His voice was empty like his eyes. I left Starbucks to cry at my desk. 

2.23

One of the worst things about being laid off is knowing that had it happened two weeks later, you would have gotten paid vacation. I had planned my trip to Panama a while back and by now, it’s all non-refundable. So I have to go. 

I mean, I want to go. It’s good I’m going. I love warm weather. I love vacation. But it also sucks financially. 

Anyways, I leave in three days. I just spent today prancing around the city shopping for bathing suits and pretending I have money. I got beers with my friend Jason and then went to therapy drunk. My therapist didn’t know I was drunk or if she did, she didn’t say anything. The woman in my Uber pool on the way there had a really loud conversation and I tried not to laugh. Therapy was fine. She asked a lot of questions.

Afterwards, I went to the gym drunk in the middle of the day. I posted an Instagram Story with a pic of me in my sports bra saying, “Day drunk at the gym. I’m not spiraling, you’re spiraling.” A lot of people saw it. One messaged asking if I was okay. Someone else sent the laughing emoji.

2.24 

I leave in two days. I spent the day chilling at a coffee shop, but I couldn’t really focus because some ladies were yelling in Greek. I know it was Greek because my ex was from Greece and he used to yell like that. 

When the shop started to close, I went on Facebook and saw that Kevin had posted: “Can anyone drop off quarters? I’m super sick and need to clean my bed sheets.”

That was kind of fucked up. Instead of asking random people on social media, he could have called me. I marched down to the bank and got him quarters. Then I went to Target and bought him soup, Gatorade, and Tylenol. There was a baby screaming for ages in there and my head hurt and I was in a rush to make the bus.

When I went to pay, they were out of paper bags so I had to buy a plastic reusable one for a dollar. Then I went on the bus, walked through a sketchy area full of old vintage stores with creepy mannequins in the window, and dropped it on his doorstep. 

I hope Kevin gets his shit. He still hasn’t called me. 

2.26 

I am at the airport now. Crying. 

Kevin dumped me last night, right before my trip. After I dropped off the soup, he texted me, “Would have been great if there had been noodles in this soup.”

I raged. Who the fuck does that? Who doesn’t know how to say thank you? Apparently Kevin. He didn’t plan to see me either. He texted me at 9pm last night asking if I was coming to the bar where we do open mic comedy. I had told him I wasn’t going. 

“I’ll just come over after,” he texted.

“No you won’t. Clearly, you don’t give a fuck,” I replied. “This trip is a big deal. I’ll be gone for two weeks. We could have gotten dinner. I have had fuckboys try harder than this.”

I repeatedly told him not to come over until he said, “Don’t contact me again. Enjoy Panama.” I texted, “Are you breaking me up with me over text?”

He was. 

But then I guess he felt bad because he called me. The conversation went like this:

“Hey, what are you doing?”

“I just showered.”

“Okay.”

“Are you breaking up with me?”

“Yeah, it’s not working.”

“Okay, I guess that’s it then.”

“Yeah. But you understand, right? Like this affects you in a big way.”

“Yeah, I understand.”

“Okay.”

“Okay. I don’t think I have anything of yours. If you have anything of mine, let me know.”

“I don’t.”

“Okay, bye then.”

“Bye.”

I thought about my toothbrush that I had brought to his house a week prior. I went to put it in his cabinet, but then stopped. It didn’t feel right. 

So that was last night. That was fun. And now I’m here crying in the airport with no job and no man and a big backpack about to go to Latin America alone. I’m not even scared. I’m just empty. 

2.27 

I touched down in Panama yesterday afternoon. The beginning of my trip starts in Costa Rica so I took a connecting flight there. I don’t really have time to write.

I am also gonna throw out this journal because Kevin gave it to me on Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day when he complained about having to get me a gift and make dinner reservations. He gave me this journal with the price tag still on it as well as chocolates and a card with the two of us poorly drawn on the inside. 

At dinner, his eyes were empty and he talked about scary things and I didn’t trust him but I wanted the red bag of gifts and I wanted to sit next to other couples and eat spaghetti and meatballs and I wanted to feel like I wasn’t lonely. 

But fuck it. Fuck Kevin and fuck this notebook and fuck his stupid fucking patchy beard and his skinny, slithery naked body. I’m done. 

3.9 

Oh my god. I’m in the airport again. I’m writing this on the notes on my phone, but I can’t even type it all out. Damn did I have a good time. I went surfing and snorkeling and boating and horseback riding and cliff diving. The people here are so kind and the food is so good. I feel so much lighter, so much more open, so much more grateful. 

The best thing about my trip, though, was the people I traveled with. In my tour group, there were a few Brits, one Canadian and a ton of Germans. I was the only American. Our tour guide was from Costa Rica and we talked in Spanish sometimes. 

On my first day, I was feeling exhausted from traveling and having to wake up at 6am. I had met some people the night before, but there was a new guy, whose flight had arrived late. He was tall and blonde and pale with blue eyes. 

“You’re German too?” I had asked him. Of course he was.

We talked for a bit and I got his name, Marcel. Then I went white water rafting, where I thought about Kevin and how our relationship had died the day I had sex with him. ‘No more sex!’ I thought to myself as I paddled against the current.

That didn’t last long.

Marcel chatted me up at dinner that night and by the time we hit the bonfire on the beach, he was putting an arm around me. I was so weak for him. He told me about his study abroad in Asia and the foods he’s tried and the kind of work he does. His accent was soft, but noticeable. His eyes were especially blue and his arms were especially muscular. 

Later, he would teach me how to say ‘strong bicep’ in German and I would say it all the time, mixing it with the dirtier phrases I had picked up along the trip. 

As we sat by the fire, he kissed me. I kissed back but got worried about other people watching us, so I suggested we go down by the beach. We were making out under the moonlight, sand in our toes, wind in our hair. It was like a goddamn movie. 

And the movie didn’t stop. Every day, Marcel and I would spend time together. He held my hand, he cuddled me, he kissed my forehead. He helped me put on my sunscreen one day, he helped me put on my aftersun the next. 

I felt like I was melting. It was so nice - he was so nice. 

Eventually, I had to break. I told myself that the no-sex rule didn’t count on vacation because it was vacation and time was sped up. Marcel and I slept together in his private room and he was MASSIVE. I screamed like someone was splitting me open with a chainsaw. But it was the good kind of scream. It meant I was enjoying myself. 

On the trip, we had so much sex. It was annoying that I got my period literally two days in. I was using the Diva Cup and one time, as we were showering together, he almost touched it. “Fuck, no, I have to take that out!” I had shouted. 

When he left the bathroom, I stuck my hands up my vagina and took out the bloody plastic cup and hid it in the medicine cabinet. We had sex so rough that we moved the bed two or three feet from the wall. 

Whenever we weren’t hooking up, we were talking. Deep, long talks about life and relationships and money. I told Marcel about American fuckboys and how awful they are. He didn’t understand our dating culture and thought dating apps were useless. “If you want to meet someone, just meet them in person,” he said. I nodded as he grabbed my waist and kissed me on top of the lookout point outside of Panama City. 

There were so many moments like that. Moments that felt like they were cut from a movie scene. I have pictures of us riding into the sunset on horseback, sharing margaritas at local restaurants, posing together by a palm tree. I also have silly photos of him making faces at the Panama Canal, or of me pretending that my drink is a dick that I’m eager to suck. On long car rides, we would write captions and turn them into memes. I don’t plan on deleting them. 

One of my favorite moments was when we went snorkeling as a group. I got stung by a jellyfish and got bright red rashes all over my butt. Lucy, who had medical training, said that someone needed to pee on it. We all turned to Marcel, but he said he didn’t have to pee. So a small British guy named Andrew had to do it instead. Andrew had a shy bladder and it took a few tries, but eventually the stinging stopped and I could see the puffiness going down.

Later, despite his good deed, Andrew got stung by a jellyfish and Marcel, finally ready to pee, had to do the honors. “We have a special bond, the three of us,” Andrew had said later that day when he found me and Marcel cuddling in the bunk beds in the boy’s cabin.

We had sex in that cabin. We also had sex in the girl’s cabin on top of my roommate Sara’s bed. When we were done sweating and screaming, we put all her stuff back, though nowhere as neatly as she had it arranged before. She fell asleep right away without even noticing.

I think my favorite place that we had sex was probably outside. On a blanket on the beach in the middle of the night. Marcel had trouble coming with condoms on, but he was hitting it so forcefully as I laid on my stomach that we both came. There was something about outside, not knowing if we would be caught, that made it that much better. I felt like a wild animal, a beast of the night.

Marcel liked to fuck me, but he liked it even more when I rode his dick. That was his favorite. The last night we spent together, I rode his dick so hard and fast that his eyes started to roll back and he grabbed onto the sheets for help. 

We didn’t just have sex though. We talked, we shared food, we went for walks holding hands and swam together. He used to squat down in the water and make his legs into a bench so I could sit on his lap in the ocean. He held me so tight.  

“You know, I like you,” Marcel told me one day as I complained yet again about American guys. He was always direct. German. “If you want, I will use my vacation time to come to America. And you could come to Germany.”

I smiled at him from my beach chair. “I’d like that.” 

“And you have my number, we will FaceTime,” he continued. “Don’t worry.”

I nodded and grinned, though I don’t know if we really will keep in touch and I don’t know if I ever will go to Europe. I think that what is meant to work out will work out. It’ll be okay either way.

At the end of the day, Panama was so gorgeous and I am so grateful for what I experienced. I know when I go home, I have no job, I have no Kevin (honestly, that’s a good thing). But I do have these memories. I do have hope. And maybe that’s enough for now.