how do you tell someone?

well. that happened.

being still kinda new to this whole divorced-woman thing, i have no idea how to handle certain situations. for example: how do you react when your ex, in the middle of a business conversation, suddenly asks you who your boyfriend is?

uh, whoops. see, turns out, genius mags responded to something related to the tornado on a friend's facebook page with a reference to the man's family. this friend is one of the people i got in the mags-ex mutual-friend draft, but she didn't cut the ex off. (not that i expect her, or anyone else, to; who people are friends with is their business and their business alone.) he read that, and, well, hilarity ensued. oh, and did i mention i was walking down massachusetts avenue at the time, between union station and school, on my way to take an exam at the time?

to call me gobsmacked by this is an understatement. my first response was, do you really want to do this now? i mean, it was 10:00 AM. he was at work. i didn't really want to deal. but yeah, he did. and since i make it a point to be as direct as possible with him these days, i flat-out told him, yeah, [the man] and i are dating. and then i answered his questions as briefly, directly and succinctly as possible. to reference nada surf again, i told him honestly, simply, kindly but firmly. i didn't make a big production, and i avoided a big tear-jerking scene. we finished our business and got off the phone without incident.

at least, until i got to school, when i shut myself in a bathroom stall and cried for a solid 10 minutes.

i'm traveling today, at a three-day conference in glorious south beach. (meditations on that are forthcoming.) i don't really want to relive the emotion. but somehow, telling the ex that i a) have a man and b) he's, well, the man, someone who was a huge part of my life through my entire relationship with the ex, was thoroughly shattering. i mean, why should it? it's not his business. he even said as much as he asked. i guess that was the last step in severing the emotional ties between us, inasmuch as they were there in the first place. but good GOD, how hard. i can't even get into how hard that was. anyone else out there been through this before? what did y'all do? what CAN you do?

i just hope i did that right.