Was randomly thinking about this, so I figured I’d make a random post about this.
In ninth grade, I dated a girl for the first time ever. And honestly, this basically happened because I was a closeted bi girl at the time, excluding two close friends who knew I was bi, and one friend who I had told I was genderqueer; and one of the two friends I was out to introduced me to Ace*, and she was publicly bi, and I was like, holy shit, actual bi girl my age, yes, that is attractive, please date me and stuff.
And so I told her I liked her, and then she liked me, so I came out as bi to a few more close friends, and then Ace and I were dating and kissing and doing sleepovers and general couple things. And even though I wasn’t really attracted to Ace as any more than a friend, I was so in to it mostly because we were both bi. And then, I got to have the most ridiculous set of things happen, I have ever had happen to me ever.
That being, Ace broke up with me over a long weekend, publicly, on facebook.
Which, because I was a mostly closeted bi person, and she was not, was a fucking huge dick move. But it was even weirder, because that weekend I came out to my parents as bi with the specific purpose in mind of being able to tell them about Ace, since Ace and I had been dating at that point for a little over a month and a half, and I was growing rather fond of her.
And weirder, because not only did she publicly break up with me on facebook, tagging my name and everything, her boyfriend that she broke up with me for, also made a public post outing me. And, at that point in existence, I hardly ever used facebook. Basically never, honestly; occasionally posting a silly picture, or posting a poem or song I had written or sung, but at that point, I didn’t use facebook as my primary way of connecting with the world at all, and was virtually never on it. So I didn’t see Ace break up with me, and she was in theory out of town that weekend, so we weren’t in touch. So I got to school on monday and didn’t know that Ace had broken up with me.
I basically knew something was up from the start of the day because, as a person who was bullied, I payed attention to the people who gave me shit, because I needed to be able to tell what type of day it was going to be. The type in which I got snide comments all day, or was ignored all day, or the scary days in which people decided they could enter my personal space. And a group of people at my bus stop were all talking, and at one point, one of them looked at me, and then they all laughed, and I was just like, ooooookaaaay, what happened this time? But mostly ignored it. And then I got to school, and a sort of vague attachment of mine that I really didn’t know well at all, but he wasn’t a complete shit head to me, therefore, I titled him a friend, pulled me aside with a quiet, “Hey, can I talk to you?” And then promptly asked me if I was a lesbian. To which I blinked, and said, “I’m not a lesbian? I’m bi,” because fuck it, he was sort of a friend of mine, so he may as well know the truth, especially if he was asking. And he quietly said, “Oh,” and we went on our merry ways.
Me and Ace used to meet every morning in the library, so that’s where I headed, and kept checking my phone for a message from her, saying something, and kept not getting one. A friend of mine, Bri*, asked me if I was okay, or needed to talk, and I was confused, because I was fine. When Ace got there, she walked in the library, I smiled at her, started to say something, she froze, turned around, and walked out of the library as quickly as she could. Which was the first time it occurred to me that something might have happened. So I turned to Bri and asked if something had happened with Ace, and Bri stared at me and just said, “You don’t know.” And I stared back and was like, “I don’t know what?” and she was like, “I can’t be the one who tells you.” So I decided to go find where Ace had run off to, which included me first going to see if she was just outside somewhere logical - she wasn’t - and then me asking a few of our mutual friend-type people (one of which was her new boyfriend, Ty*, not that I knew that) if they knew where she was. Nobody knew. Or at least, nobody was telling me. I’m not sure which.
Ace finally comes back in to the library accompanied by Ty and I approach them and ask, “Hey Ace, can I talk to you for a moment?” And she does that thing that happens in books, in which her face genuinely pales, and she stiffens, but still nods, like it’s the hardest thing in the world. So we step about five feet aside and are now standing in the middle of all the backpacks that people drop off at the library entrance, and I ask, “What is going on?” and she says, “You know what’s going on,” and I say, “I actually don’t. I just got here today and know that you ran and hid when you saw me earlier, but I don’t know why.” Which appears to be the first time it has occurred to her that I literally have no clue what is going on. And she says, “Oh g’d, I thought you didn’t reply because you were upset.” And I stare at her for a moment, and say, “Reply to what? A text message?” and she says, “Did you see the facebook post?” and I stare blankly at her. “No. What facebook post?” I say, and she looks anywhere but me and says, “I can’t tell you, you have to read the facebook post, sorry, I have to go.” And she runs off again. And I’m like, what the fucking hell. Of course I didn’t have any way of getting on to facebook at school so, I decided to poke at the friend-type people we had.
And I guess like, all of our mutual friend-type people had taken a freaking vow of silence because when I asked them, they all responded with some variety of, “I can’t be the one who tells you,” and “it’s not my place,” and “you need to see it yourself.”
So I took a different strategy with one of my friends. Jak* and I had theatre together and always sat next to each other, and I had managed to collect enough vague clues across the day to know that whatever had happened had something to do with myself, Ace, and Ty; and Ty and Jak were self proclaimed best friends. So I started talking to Jak about what had happened, pretending I knew what had happened. And finally I manage to worm my way enough into the conversation, that he says, “I mean, I sort of understand Ace’s post, but I think Ty making a post about it was pushing it a little too far.” And so I respond with, “Oh, I only saw Ace’s facebook post. What did Ty’s say?” And Jak is like, “Oh, it just said that he was really happy that Ace had had enough courage to break up with you so that the two of them could be happy together.” (note: Jak actually wasn’t one of the people I was previously out to, and he literally could give less than a shit that I wasn’t straight, he was totally fucking chill with it)
But I wanted to laugh so hard, because this was the most convoluted way of getting dumped ever, and like, I could so care less that we broke up. The thing I did care about? Everybody, I’m not kidding you, everybody at my school now knew I wasn’t straight. The next day I got pulled aside by a teacher who wanted to know if I could help set up a GSA. A few days after that, my theatre teacher made a quick announcement to the class that if anybody in the class was mean to somebody because of their sexuality they’d be hearing from him, and basically, there were a bunch of random lesbian rumors floating around about me for a while. Once I finally got on facebook that evening, I untagged myself from Ace’s post, and sent her a private message saying I was completely fine with it, and that we should still be friends. And that was it. But that day was one of the weirdest days of my junior high school existence. Because what even. Why would nobody just tell me. Why did I have to pretend that I knew what was going on just to find out what was going on.
(*all names changed)
TLDR; my first girlfriend ever broke up with me on facebook, I didn’t see the post, everybody else knew but nobody would tell me, so I had to pretend I knew what had happened in a conversation with a mutual friend so that I could finally figure out what the fuck was going on.
