Post-Traumatic Ex Syndrome

My friend is fabulous, awesome, and moving out of her apartment. As with any shift in space, she offered me some books she wouldn’t need in her new abode in addition to the 20th Century Edition of Trivial Pursuit. The box of books she handed over (or, really, her dreamy Polish doorman handed over) is about 25% readable and 75% “Barnes-and- Nobles-Recommended Reading After Getting Dumped” or “Barnes-and-Nobles-Employee Picks for Being a Mistress” or “Barnes-and-Nobles-Customer Favorites For Waking up One Morning Fully-Clothed, Locked Out of Your Own Bathroom With a Strange Yellow Stain in the Middle of the Carpet.” Some of these books are awesome, (and who knows if I’ll need/use the Trivial Pursuit), but the majority of the books boxed-over to me are clearly indicative of some sort ex-boy nervous breakdown…

6 Reasons Why I Think This:

1. Hell Hath No Fury: Women’s Letters from the End of the Affair
2. The Between Boyfriends Book
3. I just got Dumped and I’m Angry
4. Good Girls Gone Bad
5. Good In Bed
And
6. Memoirs of a Geisha

Some other favorites include Backaches: What Exercises to Do, and Self Made Man among a slew of books about being fabulous in NYC (The Devil Wears Prada, Simply Divine, NYC Zagat Survey 2004).

I know what you’re thinking: Maybe, instead of these books indicating her nervous breakdown, she handed these specific literary works to me because she thinks I’m a boy- crazy nutjob? I mean, she has subtly gifted about an eighth of any respectable Self-Help section, (though, of course, the Self-Help section is typically the least respectable section in a book store, even more so than Sci-Fi and that section of art-book-photos of naked people that could pass for soft-core). But this argument (the argument that I could possibly need man-advice) is obliterated with the gift of books entitled What Would Jackie Do? and Oxford Spanish Dictionary PLUS.

Also, before I need to worry about dealing with a breakup, I need to deal more with convincing someone to date me in the first place.