The blogosphere removes the legwork of keeping tabs on lost loves

BY MARC-ANTHONY MACON

Ten years ago, he took my heart from my rib cage, a la Mola Ram in Temple of Doom, set it on fire, stomped on it, chopped it up into bits, swallowed it, shat it out, and gave it to a herd of socialist dung beetles. He walked out, taking his hideous glassware and dance CDs with him, and turning our door into my door. The relationship started on the rocks, and it ended on razor blades.

We were bad for one another, and that’s good for a while. Violently choleric and tumultuous relationships are a rite of passage; a merit badge that we’ve all got to earn and sew onto our skin, so we can hold our heads high, knowing we’ve been there, we’ve done it, and we’re better than it could ever hope to be.

No matter how much healing we do henceforth, though, we’re always left with just enough scar tissue to wax nostalgic about those alternately torrid and tepid days of whatever it was that passed for love. You know, through a soft-focus lens with a tinkling piano in the background and probably some birds singing way off in the distance like some brand of soothing alarm klaxon.

It should therefore come as no surprise that most of us catch a case of masochistic sentimentality where our exes are concerned, and we do the only reasonable thing a person in our position can do: Stalk the living hell outta them.

And stalking ain’t what it used to be, kids. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, we no longer need to leave our homes to get a more comprehensive stalking experience than ever before. Google spat out his Web site and blog, complete with a brand new picture of what the decade-older him looked like.

He smiled. Awkwardly. He looked tired, and he was wearing a baseball cap. In fact, every photo carried that theme: My emerald-eyed ex, wearing a hat and his long, moppy blonde hair nowhere in sight. Houston, we have balding.

Then I paged through the blog, soaking in the missing years and learning that he’s currently starring in the drug addled One Night Stand show. I wondered how new that was. Hell, for all I know I was his drug addled one-year stand. Then I stumbled upon something that I wasn’t expecting: One of the entries was about me. Not just about me, but about him cyber-stalking me. He said he’d searched and found my blog. He said I was wasting my life. He said I was a 30-something still trying to act like I was 18. Oooo, zingy burn!

With that came our little epiphany: It didn’t hurt. It wasn’t related to the truth; it was like the truth’s cousin, eight times removed. And his life didn’t seem like it was a bowl of Smurf Berries. Yeah, I’m lucky to be the one who’s still trying to act like I’m 18 with my stable, secure, happy and scathingly hot long-term relationship; and he’s the one being all mature and adult by loading up on coke and meth so he won’t cry when he sits and spins on the motel stranger du jour.

Sound self-congratulatory? It should. It is. Call it vengeance, vindication or validation, but online ex-stalking showed me that I dodged a bullet. And isn’t that what ex-stalking is all about? Who we might have become? My life almost sucked, but it’s brilliant instead. I hope for his sake that he thinks the same of his life when he’s stalking me.