My Four Exes

A history in excruciating detail

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Category Archives: Joe

1995, the first love, blonde and brawny

Eye of the Beholder

10 / 9 / 13

I’ve never been a great beauty, and I’m not saying that to fish for compliments, so don’t. I’m not terrible to look at, but my hair leans toward “ashy” (which I think is the polite way to say “mousey”). I have thunder thighs (even when I’m relatively thin, which is not always, as I lean toward the chunky side anyway). My skills in fashion, make-up, and hair are fair-to-middling at best. All of this I know, and all of this I am ok with.

beholder

But there have been some exes who made me feel more than average.

Joe loved my eyes. He’d wax poetic about them… badly, sort-of-rhyming, and without any kind of meter, but still “poetic.”

Shane told me I was beautiful all the time– my hair, my face, ya know. Then after we broke up, he made an off-hand jab to the effect of, “You’re actually not that great. I was just saying it to make you feel better.” Oof. Part of this I’ll blame on the fact that I dumped him and he needed some revenge. But part of it, at least, I have to accept as truth.

Luke’s compliments never went much past, “You’re purdy,” but he meant it from his heart.

And Matt? Well, Matt was probably the most convincing, but that’s likely because he had the best chance of getting in my pants, and when you want to get there, you spread the compliments on pretty thick, unless you’re dumb or something.

So if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess I have to tell you I’m beautiful. I have pretty eyes and soft hair and a lovely smile. At least if you’re trying to sleep with me.

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Attraction

9 / 15 / 13

I admit to actual full-on teenage crushing when I saw Joe, before I even spoke a word to him, or he to me. He was beautiful and I wanted him, even if I didn’t really know what the wanting was all about. Perfect curly blonde hair and a beautiful, blinding smile and biceps. Yeee-ah. The butterflies were definitely happening.

attraction

Weirdly, I got butterflies with Luke, too, but they were different. With Joe it was all about the teeth and the hair and the muscles, but with Luke it was about the laugh and the way he could tell a joke with only body language and how he never failed to laugh at my jokes either. And instead of, “God, I’d like to bite those biceps,” it was more like, “I would hang out with you so hard and then I would enjoy the shit out of you.”

So attraction: It’s weird. Of course I was attracted to Luke. There were still butterflies. There was still delicious anticipation when I knew I was going to see him soon. There was still electricity between us. But it wasn’t so… visceral? That’s the wrong word. Because it was still a physical reaction– actual sensations of tingling, people, I’m not kidding.

It wasn’t more than what I felt for Joe, because there was exactly none of the desire to, you know, mark him with my teeth or anything, but it wasn’t less either. It was about connecting and loving and being delighted to find out exactly what he would say or do next.

I’ve said before that maybe Luke and I should have stayed just friends, and that his declaration of lurve sort of hit me from left field, but I’m not sure the Just Friends thing would have worked either. It was too much. It was wanting to know literally everything about him, and that would be creepy for a friendship, right?

Anyway, maybe it was the inevitable that happened with Luke. We couldn’t be Just Friends– well, firstly, because he was in love with me, and secondly because I guess I was in love with him, too, in a way. I think I was his biggest fan, and if that’s not happening in an actual fan-to-star relationship, or a lover-to-lover relationship, maybe it just doesn’t work.

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In Sickness

9 / 10 / 139 / 10 / 13

I don’t think you should commit to someone, really, until you’ve seen them at a low point. Morbid as it seems, low points are what define us.

in-sickness

Joe didn’t get to see my low point until he was about to head off to college on the other side of the country. The second day of my sophomore year of highschool,  I stepped  out of the minivan to walk into the building and stepped off the curb and right onto my ankle. I was wearing adorable little canvas sneakers and little bitty khaki shorts– I remember because I never wore those shoes again and I wore jeans for weeks afterwards to cover the ace bandage. (Good thing flare jeans were in back then.) My ankle swelled up and turned purple by the end of the day. It hurt like a bitch.

Joe didn’t make much of it, good lad. He must’ve realized that attention-seeking was not my bag and a softball-sized purple ankle was doing nothing to help me blend in, and I hated the whole situation. He just checked my ace bandage to make sure I wrapped it right and then chivalrously carried me up the front steps of his parents’ house so I could come in and see their new kittens later that week. So I guess I passed that “low point” test… except that he was gone about a week later and we sort of broke up by default just because we stopped talking to each other. Hrm. I’ll not blame that on my low point, though.

The first time Shane came to visit, I was on my period. He was staying in the den in the basement on the pull-out couch, just next to the downstairs bathroom, which happened to be the one I stumbled to sometime in the wee hours of the morning in search of fresh feminine hygiene items and Midol. There may have been quiet whimpering, but I tried not to make too much noise.

The next day he admitted he’d been awake for the whole thing. I was mortified, but explained the situation as delicately as I could and then blocked it from my consciousness by sheer force of will. Later that day we played some badminton in the yard and he kept asking me if I was ok, and I kept assuring him that I was fine, and I didn’t realize until much later that it must have been the midnight whimpering that set off his concern. Oops.

Still, I think I passed that one, too, because I ended up with an awkward kiss and a fantastic tickle fight.

Luke probably saw more of my lows than any of my other exes, by virtue of the fact that we spent the most time together, by far. He came to visit me once when I was sick. My mom ushered him into my darkened bedroom and he sat on the edge of my bed and murmured platitudes while I prayed to God he wouldn’t look at my hair and I wouldn’t throw up on him. He didn’t stay long and I think we were both fine with that. But he never shied away from my sickness or tears or even my foul, horrible moods.

I’m sitting here wracking my brain for a low that Matt might have seen, but all I can think of are the tearful, screaming fights and I guess that’s enough of a low. Maybe the phrase should be, “in sickness and in health, and also in snotty, red-faced rampages.” (Of course, he’s the only ex I ever rampaged at, so maybe some of it wasn’t me. Just sayin’.)

I’m glad they stuck with me through my lows– gross, bloody, and hateful though they were. Anyone who manages that gets some hindsight props from me. Hear that, boys? Fine job.

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What I (Don’t) Remember

8 / 28 / 13

For a while when I’m in a new relationship, I remember every interaction. It sounds a little stupid to say that I guess– probably everyone does that. But I’m talking in the range of 6 months to a year before I start forgetting fights and conversations and kisses and day trips here and there.

But everything fades with time, I guess.

dontremember

I don’t remember much of what Matt and I fought about, besides the old stand-bys of, “You are not being supportive,” and, “You don’t pay enough attention to me.” (Both of those were Matt’s complaints. I don’t remember what I picked fights about. Probably about how he picked fights too much, because I wanted to be able to look back on that period of my life and appreciate the irony. Yeah.) I’m sure they were world-stoppingly important at the time, but hey.

I don’t remember the middle names of three out of the four exes. I only remember Shane’s middle name because he signed it on his letters all the time and it was as much a part of his name as his first and last.

I sure as hell don’t remember their birthdays.

I don’t remember Joe’s favorite food or Luke’s favorite song or Shane’s favorite book.

But I remember the way all of their hands looked– the color and texture of the skin, the shape of the thumbs. I remember what Matt smelled like. I remember how Luke liked to be touched. I remember the cadence of Shane’s voice. I remember Joe’s laugh.

And maybe it’s not that important that I can’t remember all the little things Matt and I fought about, or the name of Shane’s sister, or Luke’s GPA. Because I’d rather save room in my brain for their hands and their scents and their laughs.

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The Other Woman

8 / 23 / 138 / 23 / 13

You already know about Bianca. Bianca was the other woman before I really put the pieces together, and before Joe said the worst thing he ever said to me. This was mostly because I hated Bianca.

otherwoman

I have reserved my hate for a very small number of people in my life. Others have earned my stink-face and my dislike and my annoyance, but never my pure hate (partly because hating takes so much energy). One former supervisor and one former coworker have earned my hate. (And they were truly horrible people and totally deserved it.) And the only other one I can think of is Bianca.

Anyway, Bianca was always the other woman because even before I saw her dragging Joe off for heart-to-hearts and trying to flirt her way between us, I identified her as my competition. My much skinnier, smaller, cuter competition, damn her. It didn’t matter that she was grumpy and whiny and generally unfun. She was little where I was distinctly large, and her hair was flat and straight where mine was poofy and disobedient, and she was always the damsel in distress where I was always Cinderella smirking from her sooty corner. And sometimes Cinderella doesn’t feel like singing duets with the goddamn little birdies anymore. Sometimes Cinderella wants to kick fireplace ash in Bianca’s stupid face and then yank on her dumb, perfect hair. (Very mature, Cinderella.)

Shane’s other woman was Sarah. He told me about Sarah immediately. They were best friends, and they had a relationship that went far beyond any stupid boyfriend-girlfriend stuff (like what we had). She was his sisterly soulmate or some crap. Sarah was beautiful. Sarah was smart. Sarah hung the stars in the freaking sky. I never met Sarah, but I bet she had wings and a halo.

Perhaps most dysfunctional of all, Matt’s other woman was his mother. He’d hoisted her up on a pedestal from his earliest childhood, vilified his dad (who honestly didn’t seem all that bad to me), and would only claim his mother’s heritage (she was half Irish) and not his father’s (he was first generation Cuban-American). Everything he did was in tribute to his mother. He was chivalrous because his mother would be ashamed if he wasn’t. He butted in to everyone’s business because that’s what his mother did. He worried and fretted over her constantly (not that she didn’t perpetuate it by flipping out about everything).

After we broke up, he called me for some reason or another and in the course of conversation told me that our break-up had made his mother cry. Then he paused dramatically, like I was supposed to say something like, “Well in that case, maybe we should try again.” I didn’t. Neither did he. We just let the dramatic silence linger for a minute and then mutually decided on a nope. Or maybe mutually decided that Matt was better off with his one true Oedipal love.

So, I guess sometimes the other woman wins.

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Joe the Wrestler

8 / 14 / 13

I mostly managed to avoid dating jocks. Or they managed to avoid dating me. Whatever.

But Joe was a wrestler.

wrestler

If the only thing you know about high school wrestling is that Emilio Estevez was supposed to be a wrestler in The Breakfast Club, you may wish to turn away now. Because wrestling is sort of gross.

Over the course of the year, someone on the wrestling team got some sort of worms and everyone had to be treated for it. Boys frequently contracted a condition called “cauliflower ear” which is just as nasty as it sounds. And let’s not even talk about making weight. Ew.

Additionally, I’m sorry, but they do wear tights, and have their faces in each other’s junk all the time, and generally look like mating beetles during nine out of ten matches.

It’s not a glamorous thing.

Mostly, I managed to avoid the whole situation, but one Saturday, I had the pleasure of going to a meet with Joe’s dad. I had to make awkward conversation with the dad in the car for an hour on the way to the out-of-town school. (Joe rode on the team activity bus, of course, not with us.) Then I had to wait around all day for Joe’s 5 minutes of fame. Then I had to hug him after. (Blech.) And then I had to make more awkward conversation with Joe’s dad for another hour on the way back.

The next morning, I woke up with a bruise in the middle of my back from leaning back on the bleachers too hard, and a hate for wrestling that has never truly left me.

I suppose if I’d been a better girlfriend, I would have cheered him on at more meets and stuff. I would have been more sympathetic about the making weight rituals and the disgusting injuries.

Lucky for me, I was fourteen and could plead complete ignorance on what a good, supportive girlfriend was supposed to do. I’m sure it saved me from at least a few parasites.

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The Pet Names

7 / 12 / 132 / 22 / 15

teenagers-in-loveOh pet names, you subject of much consternation. Sometimes we love them, sometimes we hate them, but somehow it seems we always manage to have them. Ok, well, maybe not always…

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I Wish I’d Said

6 / 13 / 13

I wish I’d said…

wishsaid

To Matt: “I’m not broken. Go find someone else to fix.”

To Joe: “What the hell are you doing with Bianca? Tell me the truth.”

To Shane: “I’m scared. I’m scared of everything. I’m scared of what my friends think. I’m scared of what my parents think. I’m scared of what this could end up being. I’m scared of how much I love you.”

To Shane: “We should probably kiss right now, while we have the chance.”

To Joe: “Too much saliva, buddy.”

To Luke: “If you stick your tongue in my ear one more time, I am not responsible for the damage I inflict upon your person.”

To Luke: “Thanks for being my best friend. Really. You are my best friend.”

To Matt: “I actually don’t like any of the Saw Doctors’ songs. Not a one.”

To Don: “I love you.”

To Shane: “I’m sorry.”

To Luke: “I’m sorry.”

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High Fidelity Joe

6 / 4 / 13

I read High Fidelity for the first time after I got married and was done with the whole dating scene. If you’re not familiar with the book or the movie (featuring John Cusack), this dude has a crisis of faith or something after his long-term girlfriend dumps him and decides to find all of his exes and talk to them about why their relationships didn’t work.

I cringed mightily at the thought of this. I would, for one, not like to go back and hear from my exes why they decided I was messed up enough that it wasn’t going to work between us.

Besides, I pretty much know the answers anyways. Here’s how Joe’s would go.

hifijoe

“So, Joe, why would you say it didn’t work between us?”

Joe shrugs and looks disinterested. “I dunno. Because I moved I guess. You were a pretty cool girl, though.”

“Um, thanks? But we could have tried to make it work, right? I mean, if we really wanted to…”

“Meh, maybe. Remember, though, back then we would have had to call each other long distance.”

“True. And you were broke, Joe.”

“So broke. I don’t know why I thought it would be a good idea to go to a private college across the country without a single scholarship.”

“So would you say you were under too much stress to commit to a girlfriend back home?”

Now Joe gets uncomfortable and starts hedging. “Stress? Maybe. Well… it was just a different world out there, you know? Different things and people and home was so far away and…”

“Out of sight, out of mind?”

Joe cringes, but nods sheepishly. “I guess. I’m not the first guy who’s ever gone off to college and decided to… er… sow my wild oats, you know?”

“Ew, Joe.”

“Don’t be mad,” he says. “I would have gotten back together with you when I came home if you wanted.”

“But by then I didn’t.”

“Nope.”

“You didn’t seem too broken up about that, buddy.”

“Well, you had a new boyfriend. I wasn’t going to mope around after you.”

“Fair enough. So… I guess we can blame lack of interest from both parties for our break-up?”

“When you say it like that, it sounds pretty bad.”

It’s my turn to shrug.

“Hey,” he says with a grin, “It all worked out for the best anyway, right?”

And then he picks up his toddler who immediately barfs on his ill-fitting polo shirt and jorts and I silently agree. Yeah. It was all for the best, really.

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Things I Loved About Them

6 / 2 / 136 / 2 / 13

iloved

Joe:

  • His hair — that beautiful, beautiful curly blonde hair
  • His lovely smile
  • His shoulder rubs
  • The way he kissed the back of my neck so very softly

Shane:

  • His love letters
  • His love poems (He wrote really good ones. I’m picky about love poems.)
  • His slightly bawdy sense of humor
  • His stories (fiction and non-fiction)

Luke:

  • His reactions to everything — I always knew just how he felt
  • His floppy hair
  • His love notes, always featuring cartoons
  • That he was friends with all of my friends

Matt:

  • His openness
  • His concern for his family
  • His car (shallow, but true)
  • The way he held me, like I was cherished
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Joe’s Big Secret

5 / 23 / 13

Joe successfully kept a secret from me for almost the entire time we were dating: Joe was a smoker.

joesecret

Ok, not a big deal in the adult grand scheme of things, but I was an innocent, church-going 14-year-old. It was a big deal to me, and I can see why Joe didn’t want me to find out.

But how did he do it? You’d think I would have noticed at some point, you know, because he smoked at school and in his car and pretty much everywhere, I guess.

His alibi was always that his dad was a smoker, which is why his car smelled like smoke and his letter jacket smelled like smoke and his hair smelled like smoke. Not sure why I didn’t put together that his mouth shouldn’t taste like smoke just because his dad was a smoker. (Ew.)

He told me the truth maybe a month before he left for college. I was a little bit angry that he’d lied to me, but more angry that I’d been stupid. I should have known he was lying, somehow. Why had I trusted him completely? Why had I defended him without a shadow of a doubt when my brother said he saw him smoking between classes? I’d been had, and that was on me, not so much on him.

It made me question a lot of things for a long time. Had Joe really only been “just talking” to Bianca when she dragged him away from the rest of the group for her bitch sessions? Maybe, maybe not. Did he really want to stay in a relationship when he left for school, or was he stringing me along so he’d have someone to come back to next summer? I assumed the worst of him on that one and gave back his “going steady” bracelet when he came home.

The lesson that people don’t always tell the truth hit home for me that summer, and I spent the next, like, seriously, ten years of my life second-guessing everyone. Part of that is because that’s what you do when you’re a teenager. Part of that is also probably that teenagers are shitty little back-biters in general, and I was right to second-guess them more often than not. But part of it was that I was trying to make up for being so stupid about Joe’s secret.

The good news? I got over it… eventually. In my adult life, I’m a pretty trusting person. I mostly take people at their word — but I’ll admit that a portion of that is self-preservation. (If you don’t take people at their word, you have to use up all your brain-power trying to figure out what they really meant. I am much too lazy for that.)

So Joe’s big secret didn’t permanently scar me… Ten years later I was totally over it. Heh.

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What Makes an Ex?

3 / 18 / 13

The question of what qualifies a boy as an “ex” has come up in my mind lately. For me, it’s easy to choose which four boys from my past are exes and which of the rest of them were flirtations or flings or nothing at all, really.

But to the outside world, I don’t think it would make any sense at all. The relationships I had with them ranged from ten months to three years. The physical aspects differed from literally nothing to… well, practically everything. I barely talked to some of them. I rarely was in the same room with some of them (which is probably a good thing, in some cases). I spent every waking moment with a couple of them. I poured my heart and my soul and my everything out to some… but not all.

All of them, though, are exes, and none a “more important” ex than the others. Why?

I was fourteen when I dated Joe, and I had no idea what dating was about. Most of the time, I sort of didn’t really believe any of it was happening anyway, and one day I’d wake up and this beautiful Adonis-boy would be gone, like a dream you can’t quite remember. I don’t think I ever really let myself get close to him, because I didn’t believe he was real.

Shane is the obvious example of what doesn’t make sense. My friends referred to him as my “internet lover,” and it wasn’t that far off, I guess. We never made out. We never cuddled. We never held hands. But we wrote each other long emails every day. When I went to summer camp, we wrote long letters by hand every day. We shared our secrets and our passions and our stories (real and fiction). In many ways, he seems more real to me than any of the other exes. But then, so do characters from romance novels, sometimes, so…

I don’t even know what to say about Luke. I guess you can’t spend three years of your life “with” someone and not include them on your exes list. And we were certainly more than friends. But all the moments I love and cherish about Luke are moments when we were friends doing friend things.

Matt qualifies by default because he utterly destroyed me, and you can’t do that without attaining ex status, I think.

So why? Why have these four made the cut?

Maybe it was longevity. If ten months is the magic number to make you boyfriend/girlfriend, all of them qualify. Maybe it was warm, squishy feelings, because I had the feels for all of them at some point. Maybe it’s the amount of heartbreak, because even the smallest heartbreak still hurts.

Maybe it’s just that I’m still thinking of them, all these years later.

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What I Did For Love

2 / 17 / 13

Over the years, I’ve done many things in the name of love…

  • Took an astronomy class just for an excuse to be on the football field in the dark with the boy I liked
  • Grew out my hair
  • Dyed my hair
  • Cut my hair
  • Permed my hair
  • Hung out the passenger side of a pick-up truck shouting non-sensical phrases about chickens in Spanish
  • Bestowed sexual favors outdoors in plain sight of a military helicopter (In my defense, I didn’t actually know we were in plain sight of the helicopter until it buzzed us at low altitude with its spotlight turned on. Oops.)
  • Gotten piercings
  • Listened to many hours of crappy 80s rock, crappy Irish rock, and ska
  • Made friends with many a mother, younger sibling, and cat
  • Written copious amounts of letters and emails
  • Cancelled plans with friends so I could wait by the phone
  • Cried myself to sleep
  • Learned a strip tease routine
  • “Forgot” my underwear
  • Prayed so hard my whole body shook with the effort
  • Forgave embarrassing public drunkenness (not mine)
  • Forgave embarrassing public weirdness (also not mine)
  • Forgave back-handed compliments
  • Went on road trips
  • Made mixed tapes
  • Wrote terrible poetry
  • Yearned
  • Pined
  • Moved on
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My Four Avengers

2 / 12 / 132 / 4 / 13

I do have other loves besides revisiting past relationships over and over again, and one of those loves is the movie The Avengers. There’s a lot to love about it, particularly that it features like eleventy hot super heroes. I mean, come on.

So, I thought I’d combine these two loves and tell you who my exes would be, if they were one of the Avengers.

Joe would be Thor. No question. In fact, the minute I saw Thor, I thought about Joe. It’s the hair mostly. And the biceps. And, truthfully, the fact that he seems a little dumb. But hey– sometimes great hair and some muscle are really all you need to get the job done.

Thor

Shane is Hawkeye. There’s really no other place to put him, either. Here’s my caveat: I don’t read comic books, so I don’t know anything about these guys outside of the movies… but Hawkeye seems like the strong, silent type to me. Shane wasn’t exactly silent, but he was definitely deep.

poster-of-hawkeye-in-the-avengers-2012

Luke has got to be Agent Coulson. I really wanted to assign him a superhero, but the things that made Luke himself also make Agent Coulson himself: genuinely a nice person, and funny. Also, he’s a hero in his own way, so there’s that.

tumblr_m90k2811Fr1rw2uyvo9_400

Matt’s a toughie, but I think he’d be The Hulk. Mostly because he was moody. I’m sure he’d protest and want to be Captain America. Sorry, Matt. I calls ’em like I sees ’em.

markruffalo5

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Summer and the Water

1 / 8 / 131 / 15 / 13

There’s something magical about water in the summer– something that makes teenagers fall in love, I think.

Joe

My curiosity about Joe turned into a full-fledged crush on a summer camping trip to the lake with the youth group.

Of course, I figured it was all still going to be from afar, because there is no way to look cute when you’ve showered in a public bathroom with your eyes open in case a roach came at you. Or when you’ve taken a ride in a speedboat without a hair band. Or when you’ve decided that being barefooted is the new cool thing and you end up cutting your foot on a sharp rock and limping back to your shoes, defeated.

But something about that water made him see past all that stuff I guess, because he flirted with me the whole weekend, and then asked me out a few weeks later.

Luke

Years later, Luke and I hiked out to a river behind his house. We were just friends at that point, still, even though I was being a complete dumbass about it and he was following me around like a lovesick puppy.

When we got out to our destination, the rain that had been threatening suddenly let loose in a downpour like I’ve never seen before or since. We were immediately soaked completely through with nowhere to take shelter, and we laughed and screamed and hid under a pine tree that offered almost no protection.

And I was not such a dumbass that I didn’t feel an electric pull between us– like a premonition that this “just friends” thing was not going to work, and I should just give in and kiss him while he was drenched with his soggy hair in his eyes.

I didn’t kiss him.

Somehow I missed the whole memo that getting caught in the rain with someone is incredibly romantic and you are supposed to suddenly realize that you are madly in love, and share your first movie-worthy kiss, sopping and steamy.

In the end, we just trudged back to his house, squelching in our ruined shoes… which is not really that romantic.

But the tug of that electricity in the rain never left, and you know how we ended up, so maybe it was romantic, in a way. I guess that’s the magic of summer and the water.

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Hi. I'm Ramona. I'm here to tell you about my exes -- the good, the bad, and everything in between. Names have been changed to protect the (sort of) innocent.

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