Since I started this blog, I have written over 77 posts. Almost all of them have to do with me and women — what I think of them, what they think of me, what I’ve done with them, what they’ve done to me. Out of those 77 posts, one was entirely about my ex-girlfriend (in case you missed it, here: The One Who Got Away) but occasionally, she’s played a minor role in other posts. No one is more conscious of when I mention of my ex and how often, more than me, and not just because I’m the author of each post, and thus each reference to her is my doing and my doing alone. I bring this up because I am well aware of the fact that though my ex and I broke up close to two years ago, I have not stopped talking about her since. As a matter of fact, if I were to combine the time I spent talking about her when she was my girlfriend with the amount of time she became my ex, I think it would add up to somewhere in the neighborhood of three-and-a-half years of talking about a woman.

Damn that’s a long time to talk about a person I don’t even talk to anymore. And here I go, as the title implies, talking about her. Again. Like most people who get out of a bad break up and know it’s time to move on, I did so posthaste. As a result, all the women who came into my life in the immediate aftermath of my relationship’s end would eventually ask me if I was over my ex, and of course I would scoff at the suggestion that I wasn’t. But after months in denial, I finally had enough courage to at least be real with myself. I wasn’t over my ex for longer than I care to admit, but the mythical man code says, “Never let them see you sweat especially when “them” is women.” So I followed the code, and when asked, still never admitted I was struggling with moving on, even if they gave me the side eye when I told them different. But my hats off to the women who saw right through me. They were observant like a mug of my mug, which told the truth my lips weren’t willing to tell. I was still all hurt inside and stuff. One girl I was dating named it the number one reason we weren’t going to be moving into anything serious anytime soon. Fair enough.

But when I bring up my ex to women in my life these days and am asked if I am over her, (the question always carries a slight implication I am not), I shut down the notion immediately. Yet the question remains: If I am over her like I say I am, why do I still bring her up from time to time? Fair enough. When I used to bring up my ex, my voice told on me; it’d get heavy, deep, and drip with drama. More often than not, one casual mention of my ex would spool into a story about her, which would then weave itself into some larger narrative on our relationship and break-up. It was sad, really. Now when I bring up my ex, or when I make mention of her in a post, the tone is a lot different, even if the frequency with which I bring her up isn’t. The way I speak of her now depends entirely on the conversation, and most times, those conversations are just me reminiscing on a good time from my past. When the conversation is a lot more serious, and I’m talking with someone about regrets or mistakes made in the past, of course she will come up then too. The most telling difference between talk of my ex now versus then is the fact that she shares a lot more space in my conversations with exes who came before her. When I was still struggling to get over her, one would think she was not only my last ex-girlfriend, she was the only one I ever had. Nowadays, it’s all about topic. If we’re talking about living with a girlfriend, I’ll bring my ex-girlfriend up, but if we’re talking about going on vacation with a girlfriend, another ex might come up.

It’s safe to say of all the relationships I have been in, my last one was a main event compared to the ones prior, and that’s not to say it was better, it was just bigger. In every way. She was also the most recent of my ex-girlfriends. So when you put those two factors together, of course she’s going to be brought up more than the others, but that has more to do with circumstance than feelings. So if folks want to insist I talk about her still because I haven’t yet come to terms with our break-up, I say, Let them talk or let them listen. Talks of my ex now are largely positive, straightforward, and most importantly, comfortable. The women who hear me bring up her name now, need not trip over any mention. The only reason I talk about her now is because, honestly, she changed the game. There was the man and boyfriend I was before my ex came into my life, and there’s the man I am now. For better or worse, those two guys are a lot different. And since her, I’m even more different than I was when we broke up because now I am over her. I know the title implies otherwise, but trust me, I’m fine.