Just block her without remorse

He shows me a social media post done by one of the girls he once dated. It’s one of those clichéd, embittered and sad posts of a scorned woman. I read it again and again. “She is bitter,” I mumble in conclusion. “She’s bitter and mean and that makes her very ugly.” My friend nonchalantly salts a piece of chicken-wing. He sits back and gnaws at the bones. I’m slightly surprised that she would write that because she never seemed psychotic. She actually seemed like a decent person and stable intellectually and emotionally. Actually, take that back - I’m not surprised. Clothes cover a lot about humans.

“It’s been, what, two years now?” I ask him, returning his phone. He shrugs. “She clearly either hasn’t gotten over you, or she has too much time in her hands.” I tell him.  He looks at me and says going back to her earlier posts where she is obviously at the Coast. He says, “Shouldn’t she be enjoying her time at the beach where she posted that comment from? You have a whole beach to yourself, a whole book to read and all you think about, all you want to fill your sunny days with is take a pathetic potshot at some guy you dated briefly years back and doesn’t give two tosses about you anymore?”

“You should be flattered,” I tell him. “If she is alone at the Coast and remembers to give you airtime, how bad can that be? It’s even better if she is with another guy, lying there next to her as she breathes hard trying to get your attention.”

“Oh, I’m very flattered, all right.” He says and laughs.

It’s amazing how someone can transform from a sane-looking, rational human being to this crazed, bitter and completely obnoxious person. I remember her from when they met; a soft spoken girl, hippy and sober. She had on a yellow dress that further gave her that very homely aura or someone who meditates, drinks tea by the window to watch the rain fall and only engages in sunny things. He seemed taken by her at the beginning but then things got dull as sometimes they will, and he left and I remember asking him how she was and he said simply, “ It ended,” like it was an expedition that run its course. It was a shame really but what doesn’t end? So that message on social media was a complete departure to the image I had of her, a conflicting image and I thought to myself, “Someone needs to hug that woman. Then squeeze her a lemon juice.”

But it’s not unique to her. They say hell hath no fury as a lady scorned but come one, it must get pretty exhausting to spend too much time spewing vitriol on someone who already moved on with their lives, hoping that they will take notice. Spending too much energy, time and data bandwidth acting up like a baby throwing her toys from her pram. If anything else, it’s immature. And this whole thing of women choosing to go on social media to write “heavily encrypted” messages targeted to the people they are in relationship with is saddening because they imagine that nobody knows the target of their anger or whatever it is.

I particularly have issues with those who quote the Bible with the intention of sending “subtle” messages. Bible verses to do with fire and brimstone and karma and and fury and all the things you want to befall the man who is no longer with you. Isn’t there a line to be drawn at dragging God to participate in your insomnia-fueled juvenile obsessions? Then there are those with minute by minute social media updates, vitriol-filled messages that can only - at the very best - show you as a dysfunctional person. And sometimes when you read these messages, you really feel sorry for the man, for having been so wrong to even date that froth of negativity, this rolling stone of raging psychosis.

Relationships end. But then life has to go on. But if it hasn’t ended yet and you have issues with your man and you feel that the solutions is to your grievances and moanings to strangers who follow you, then you don’t need solutions, you need a new man. Or a life.

“Just block her.” I tell my friend when he asks what he should do about her. “Treat her like annoying wind whistling through a small opening in a window. You can’t open that window and shout to the wind to stop that annoying racket, can you? No, I didn’t think so. So simply lock the window and drown that petulant ruckus.” He seemed adamant. “That seems like I’m playing to her game?” I was so frustrated I almost shouted at him, but instead I said evenly, “This might be a game to her but it’s not a game to you. It’s a nuisance. Some doors you leave slightly ajar, others you close shut. This is a door you shut down.”  So he blocked her and then finished his chicken wings.