We Don't Swallow

A few nights ago, I found myself calling my ex-fiancé to ask the one question that had been repeating itself in periods of silence for the past two months. Now, before I move on with this, I want to clear up a few points:

1. No, I didn’t actually catch myself in the literal sense. Had I physically walked in on my sorry ass blubbering incoherently into a phone like some kind of modern-day (but equally pathetic) Juliet clamoring for an idiotic and self-destructive Romeo, I would have been disgusted at the sight -barring the possibility of thinking my death was imminent because I’d just seen my doppleganger. This disgust would have made sure that Siri would have met the wall with astonishing force, to subsequently find herself in the depths of my toilet. 
2. Wait, I take that back. I would have stabbed my sorry ass before taking Siri out. Siri and her encasing are far too important for me to inflict any pain upon them both. After all, I'm sure I signed away my firstborn and my soul just so that Siri could be in my life. It’s not Siri’s fault that I haven’t programmed it to block me from making unfortunate life choices. Like a good friend, Siri just listens and lets me make my own mistakes -though in the future Siri should just refuse from letting a blubbering idiot make phone calls, just saying. I don’t know what I’d do without Siri; she features in many of my late-night conversations about the weather and sets my alarms. Now that’s true love right there.
3. Moving on, the question that had nested itself in my head during periods of silence -much like Britney Spears’ “Toxic” did circa 2004- was not “Are you of the penis persuasion?” because that particular question has actually been my unconditional friend ever since I met him, though it had been repeatedly disproved. Or so I would like to think, since I have the good fortune of being attracted to men of somewhat questionable sexuality. The fact that Lance Bass was my crush from NSYNC should serve as sufficient evidence for this claim. So should the fact that one of my high school crushes and one of the guys I dated in college ended up dating... Each other (hey, at least we all have the same taste in men). 
4. Speaking of my wonderful track record, the actual breakup is easily contextualized in the following manner:

• 6.25 years of relationship
• 1.25 years of engagement
• 1 year of long-distance (created by my decision to attend graduate school)
• 2 months of wedding planning
• 1 week of unprovoked and sudden radio silence
• (followed by) a 5 minute, over-the-phone, drive-by breakup that explained itself as well as Lindsay Lohan manages to stay sober.
• 3 months of continuous e-mail, phone, and other technological long-distance harassment on his part to get back together while I tried to be kind and understanding.
• 1 week of face-to-face harassment, guilt trips, fights, and tears for him to hear a resounding no at my end because I was feeling so pressured.
• 2 subsequent months of absolute silence and soul-searching on my part.

Ok, so where was I? Yes, I caught myself blubbering on my iPhone, possibly infecting it with all the tears and snot produced by my shameful break with reality. I couldn't quite understand why I was doing such a thing, perhaps because the snot and blubbering made me incoherent (even to myself). The only thing I could grasp from the whole brain-not-functioning-properly scenario was that it was inexplicably important (vital, even) for my weaker, intellectually exhausted alter ego to get the words out of her head (and quite possibly her heart) and transfer them into the ears of the guy who dumped her a few months ago.

"Is there any way we could make this work again?" my weaker self asked while I watched in stunned silence at those words escaping through her mouth. 

Are you fucking kidding me?! You promised you wouldn't do that, no matter what. YOU PROMISED ME!, I wanted to really just let her have it, but instead I just let her out in the open, as I oftentimes do -though this is the first time Siri has been involved in the situation. I restrained the desire to slap myself because, well, no one's perfect, right? 

It is quite apparent to me that this weaker version of my feminist self feels that it is appropriate to swallow her pride once she realizes she's made a mistake. Obviously, it's the swallowing that concerns me most, as I've repeatedly reminded her that we don't swallow. 

Pride is a bitter substance to swallow, indeed. Even more so is the knowledge that the person at the other end is so taken aback by your sudden reemergence into humanity (i.e. grew feelings again) that they are willing to knock you down a few pegs because you gave them the opportunity to do so. 

There we were, my alter ego, Siri and myself hearing a resounding no from the other end. I think none of us were actually shocked to hear this response brought by bitterness and a resurgence of what could be construed as his ego, but life continues and at least my alter ego tried and I let her. That's all we can do, I suppose.

That, remember why we don't swallow, and listen to Siri tell us how the weather's going to be like.