I still reflect on my birthday after twelve years. It was a merry time with her on a bus tour through the city, something she’d planned months ahead, and something that she’d told me would be a wonderful surprise. I’d fallen deeply in love, by then, with her mind, with her worldly experiences, both of which matched her deep blue eyes. She was the most perfect woman with whom I’d ever had a relationship, and I couldn’t let her go. So we went on the bus tour on a sunny Saturday afternoon in July.

After the tour, she took me to our favorite bar, and we ordered our favorite aperitifs, and we sat on the patio in front of the sidewalk. She kept her Ray-Ban Aviators over her eyes and said, “I think this is it.”

This is it?

This is what?

What is it?

It’s the end of the day?

It’s our favorite place?

Please tell me what it is. I’m dying to know.

Or maybe not.

“What is it?” I asked.

“This,” she said. “I think this is it.”

I’ll be honest and say I knew what she meant. It’s just, when I was given such devastating news, my heart denied such devastation.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

“I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”

What she really meant was, “I don’t want to see you.”

She could’ve waited a week or so, even a day, to cast me to the river. But for whatever unfathomable reason, she’d handpicked that particular day, the day of celebrating my birth.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Can I get a reason?”

“I just think it would be better if we stopped.”

And that was it. We sat with our drinks. While she was staring at her glass of vodka, I kept stirring my Moscow Mule and taking gulps. It felt more like a corporate firing than a romantic parting. The executive takes his subordinate out to lunch. But we skipped the meal.

Usually, whenever I was dumped, it involved a long and apologetic email, a few times a text, but never a phone call, let alone a date on my birthday. Ninety-five percent of the time, I’d been dumped by being ghosted, which was the safest and easiest way for a person to be dumped. Just pull a Machiavellian act and never appear again.

But she was bold enough to not only dump me on my birthday but to do it vis-à-vis in broad daylight in front of other people.

And then I made the most sheepish move and asked the most sheepish question:

“But can we still be friends?”

Her eyebrows sank beneath her Aviators.

“Friends? What for?”

What for? I’ll tell you what for. Maybe so she could reconsider her feelings for me and change her mind. Maybe a few days later, she would come back to her senses and realize her true feelings. Anything but this.

“I guess we could still be friends,” she said.

“Good,” I said. “Because you’re someone I don’t want to lose.”

So we stayed friends, not in real life but on Facebook. I resented her so much that I never sent her a message. I was still in love with her, yet I hated her for making me feel this sick. Actually, she was the one who was reaching out on Facebook by sending me funny articles from The Onion, and I would never respond with even a like.

But on her next birthday, when over a hundred followers gave her tender wishes, I thought it best not to include myself in words, rather a simple click of a like in the thread.

What I got in response, about an hour later, was an angry email from her:

How dare you not wish me a happy birthday and just press the like. I find it damn insulting of you.

I had enough of her lack of empathy or awareness, as if her corporately disposing me on my birthday wasn’t a civil offense. So with a scalpel and forceps, I plucked her from my Facebook. In other words, she was unfriended. It was better to excise her from my life for good than to keep her around.

She replied, a day later, with another email:

You unfriended me on Facebook. How cruel. Anyway, here’s another hilarious article from The Onion.

I never cared to read it, nor did I write her back, but obviously I never forgot about her either. I wish I did. Only if I could reflect on her, from time to time, and think, “Oh yeah, I remember that woman who dumped me on my birthday. Huh. Ain’t that something? What was her name? I wonder if she’s still alive.”

But instead, she left a lingering scar.

I stopped dating for a while. It was the most I’d ever fallen in love, and I didn’t want to suffer such feelings again. So I kept myself protected. Except protection led to harm. I closed myself off from people and especially relationships. I thought about her every day. I missed her. I hated her. I couldn’t find a woman who was better than her in every category. Maybe it was the way she’d rejected me that had her hold dominion over all the other women. I’m not lying when I say it took me close to nine years to stop thinking about her every day. And even the hands of the best surgeon can’t remove the scar.