Buffalo, NY—This week Buffalo State English professor Sandra Swillobee ended her eighteen-month relationship with arborist Glenn Guildinspruce. To reduce the sting of this heartbreak, Swillobee is going to employ self-care techniques for clarity and healing.
“Glen is a good guy,” she said, “and I really love him. He’s a great listener and very accommodating, which was refreshing at first, but eventually it became disruptive to my mental health and my inner aspect. All the other men I’ve been with have been preoccupied with guy things like craft beer, golf, and fantasy sports. To regain an acceptable level of attention, all I ever had to do was pour their growler down the drain, dump their golf clubs on the lawn, and withhold sex for a day or two. But Glen is so thoughtful and caring. When some minor thing turned us sideways, he would get an action plan together and try to make real changes. There would be all this talking, strategizing, and sincere attempts to do better. And, that’s nice, I suppose, but it was just so much easier to tantrum and withhold sex than to do all this work.”
His thoughtfulness extended to the bedroom as well. “He was always kind and attentive to my needs, but that got to be annoying, too. He nurtured my vagina as if it were a leaning to fly baby bird—step by step, gently and carefully he guided me up and up and up until I found my wings and realized that sweet dewy release. Glen’s lovemaking was well-crafted, yet enigmatic—like an Emily Dickinson poem. I know I should be thankful for his unflinching attention to detail, but I needed something different—something more.”
So now that Swillobee has broken off her relationship with Glen, she’s retreating into herself for some much needed self-care. After sending the—It’s not you, it’s me—text to him, holding back the tears, she stopped at the ethical Japanese artisanal on her way home for some finely sourced matcha. When she arrived at her apartment, she was full of pure intention and changed into her Lululemons. She sat cross-legged and breathed through a twenty-minute round of meditation, doing her best to police her thoughts, which oscillated between self-loathing and being a self-actualized goddess.
The next part of the self-care routine included journaling. Between the little pictures of flowers and birds she drew in the margins, she had the startling revelation that what she needed from Glen, was not for him to listen or nurture her, but rather, to provide a more visceral lovemaking experience—to occasionally bend her over the kitchen sink, take her in the back seat of his work truck untamed and non-translatable like in a wild, hairy Walt Whitman poem. The epiphany was such a relief, and fleetingly she thought—I am a self-actualized goddess.
When the tears from these powerful revelations ran their course, she put on her favorite Enya record. She then rebalanced her hormones by way of a good vaginal steam. She took a gummy and cried a little more, safe in the knowledge that as long as she continued to care for her inner vibe, she would get past this and be alright.
