Lights out

Libby Peck breaks up with her column in the final edition of the Pillow Talk series.

We’ve been together since August 2008. It was all so scary and exciting when it began, and it’s still scary and exciting at the end. You’ve seen me at my happiest, my saddest, my sloppiest and my most sobering. We’ve been through a lot, so to say this is difficult is an understatement.

They say all good things must come to an end. And now, my dear Pillow Talk, I think our time has come to say goodbye.

You see, when we first started our courtship, I was just a freshman, fresh out of my first college “relationship” – if you could call consistently hooking up with someone a relationship – and I was instantly enamored by the prospect of you. You were everything I thought I wanted when I was finished with my degree at Temple, and there you were, three years early – ready and mine for the taking.

You always let me vent when I needed to, and even though I didn’t necessarily say everything I needed to say, I always managed to get my point across ­­– and you understood why I needed to keep some degree of secrecy. You were there when I was angry, sad or elated. You even let me ramble on about wanting a cheeseburger when I was in Rome.

I know this may be coming out of nowhere, but often unhappiness in relationships creeps up slowly. Tiny things building on top of one another until a big series of events makes it all just so blatantly obvious that it wasn’t meant to be. I love you, and I love what we had, but it just isn’t working for me anymore.

It became obvious I was moving on when I came back from Europe – yeah, I know, even though I used to complain about it all the time. And the things I used to pride myself on just became embarrassing. There are so many funny things I could’ve told you about during my first month back in America, like my strange ability to attract men with girlfriends, but I chose to keep them to myself. You would’ve eaten it up, but I hid it instead.

I’m just not feeling you anymore. Something in our chemistry changed. Maybe it’s that I’m settling down and getting ready to graduate, since next semester will be my last. Or maybe it’s that I was settling down with someone else and just had nothing to say to you anymore.

Who wants to read about happiness, anyway?

Now that I’m steadily, dizzyingly happy, it seems like we just have nothing to talk about anymore. I’m not going to exploit my friends’ relationships just so I have something to say – I made that mistake once already this semester – and I’m not going to give away the details of my current relationship because I respect my boyfriend more than that.

And, almost more importantly, I respect myself more than that.

When you and I first got together, I was starved for attention, waiting for someone to listen to everything I thought I needed to say in order to make something of myself. I jumped at your opportunity, despite my consciousness nagging at me, asking if I really wanted to do this to myself. I had you as my soapbox, but I also had you to make me look like a fool.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved you; I really did. But our differences are vast now. Being a few years older, a few years wiser and with a few years off my liver, it’s time to grow up and recognize when I just can’t follow through with a relationship I can’t put my heart into anymore.

I wish you the absolute best of luck in your future endeavors. Whoever gets the chance to be with you next is incredibly lucky, and I can only hope that he or she finds absolute happiness with you.
So goodbye, Pillow Talk. You’ve been an integral part of my college experience, for better and for worse. I wouldn’t trade my time with you for the world. I’ll never forget you, and I hope I had the same impact on you that you had on me.

Libby Peck can be reached at elizabeth.peck@temple.edu.