When Your Model Ex-Boyfriend Keeps Showing Up In Commercials, TV Shows, Etc.

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Everyone knows break ups are hard.  You have to get your shit back, learn to be independent, and rediscover your own self worth.  It’s easy to forget the person — or culprit — if you distance yourself from them.  Avoiding seeing them and their friends can be the best way to regain this independence and move on to a new life.

This is all made much harder when the person you’re trying to avoid is on every website and TV network you watch.

In my case, this person is a budding model.

A model that not only saturates a certain internet jean company’s ad and television commercials, but also various “interesting people who dress interestingly” internet sites.

It’s even harder when people who don’t know about the break up decide to include you in their discovery of your former second half.

How many times do I have to declare our separation before it is known by the entire world?

It started with an ad on a frequented blog site. There he was, laying there with that stare I used to be so accustomed to. That stare I held close to me for more than five years. That face I used to see more than my own and could read in an instant. Now it is foreign and strange. Now it is blank and belongs to someone else.

Then came the recreation of his Facebook. The Facebook we had once shared was now solely mine and something he ignored. Now he was his own person, separate from me and my life. Separate from the feelings we had shared and confided in each other. He had distanced himself in more ways than one and he didn’t seem to be hurting at all.

Then came the commercial. The commercial I watched get made every step of the way. The audition. The casting. The win. The filming. I knew all about it before it even came out. The commercial I supported up until a month before its release. I used to wait for it to air and now I can’t wait till it’s over. I avoid televisions at all costs. Out of fear of being face to screen with the person I can’t stand the most. The person who hurt me more than I knew a person could be hurt. A person who was no longer the person they were when the short clip was filmed.

Next was his appearance on a popular internet site spotlighting individuals in NYC.  Individuals that seemed to house an interesting story or talent.  Individuals portrayed as being artistic, down to earth, and different.  He was none of these things to me anymore.

Throughout these appearances of him in different parts of my life was the recognition of him by people who knew us as one entity. We were so for years. Suddenly people began to reach out to me to show their support of him. I would get messages from people I knew well and people I barely knew at all telling me they had seen him and were proud of him, proud to know him. I was neither of those things.

Now here I am. Alone and angry. I sit here looking at his picture on my 13-inch computer screen. He is only about three inches tall in this photo but the power it has over me would be the same if he were fifteen feet tall.

Break ups are hard because they have to be. If they were easy then it would be unimportant. Just another person who came and went in the theater of life.  I like to think it would be easier if he were nobody, if he didn’t exist out of my realm of knowing him and if people weren’t faced with his accomplishments on a daily basis.

Maybe not though. Maybe it’s equally hard for everyone. It is possible that everyone hurts the same amount whether or not their hurt came from a model or public figure, or just someone who lives down the street. Someone who moved miles away never to be seen again.

Break ups are hard because we want them to be. We want to feel the pain of having an entire part of our lives cut off to prove the importance it once had. Every time I start to get away, I feel him being reeled back into my life.

Break ups are also hard because they don’t make sense. To quote an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “You don’t just wake up one day and stop loving someone.”  But maybe you do. Maybe it is as simple as that and maybe it is that unexplainable. If so I am eagerly awaiting the day that happens to me. 

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