BOOK:TIM HOUT;STYLIST: RENATE LINDLAR124 glamour.comLife / Yo u , M e , W e
there anything there I should be wor-
ried about?”
He furrowed his brow. “Erika the bru-
nette? No, no, I’m not even attracted to
that girl—I think she has a boyfriend.” It
was enough for me. I figured if he hoped
they might get together, he wouldn’t call
her “that girl.” (Yes, reader, I know you
k now where this is going. You’re bet ter at
everything than I am.)a
few weeks later Connor broke
up w ith me. I cr ied. So much.
It was hideously embarrass-
ing. What had happened to
me? This guy so obviously wasn’t into me,
we weren’t ever rea l ly t oget her in t he f ir st
place, and I was behaving like a messy tro-
phy wife who’d just been told the prenup
was ironclad.
He was sensitive about it and put up
with a lot of waterworks from a girl who’d
claimed she was fine with just “having
fun.” Over the following days the final-
ity of being dumped started to feel like
a relief. After all, it could have gone on
like that for God knows how long—being
ig nored, ma k ing myself ava ilable, swea r-
ing I was fine with how things were, too
nervous to push for “girlfriend” status. I
was angrier with myself than I was with
Connor. On one hand, he must have seen I
was more invested than he was, and argu-
ably he should have let me down easy in
the first few weeks of knowing me. On
the other, I can’t blame a guy for believing
me (or more likely, pretending to believe
me) when I insisted I was happy keeping
things low-key.
I left town a few weeks later to film
an independent movie in Indiana. After
work one night I logged in to MySpace
on the slow motel Internet. I’d held out on
cyberstalking for a while (two days) and
rewarded myself by looking up Connor
and everyone remotely connected to him.
In movies the dumped girl finds out
about the new girlfriend through a pic-
ture: the dude and his new girlfriend
smiling on a hike or kissing at a party. I
found out because Erika wrote a blog post
about it. There, on MySpace, was a half-
page post about the new man in her life.
She’d incorporated lyrics from his songs
throughout, like sappy, stilted Mad Libs.
You wouldn’t know the songs, but imagine
if Paul McCartney had a new girlfriend
and she wrote something like this: “I
knew that If I Fell it would be a Long and
Winding Road, but Do You Want to Knowa Secret? I need him Eight Days a Week,
because All You Need Is Love.”
I thought my skull was going to cave
in. Thank the Lord that I’d implemented
a “no matter how upset you are, sleep on it”
policy regarding conf lict. I drafted 10 dif-
f e r e n t e m a i l s t o C o n n o r. T h e y r a n g e d f r o m
two-page diatribes to one word: “Wow.” I
s le p t on it a nd s e nt no t h i ng.
My poor coworkers in Indiana never
heard the end of it. They had no obligation
to cheer me up, but on days I was mopey,
the director would say, “My landlord back
in L.A. told me there’s a toothless prosti-
tute named Erika hanging out behind theDumpster, and she’s offering hand jobs for
a dollar, but no one’s taking her up on it.”
“ I k n o w y o u’r e t r y i n g t o m a k e m e l a u g h ,
but she’s actually really pretty.”
“You’re right. She’s very pretty for a
toothless prostitute who smells like a pile
of dead rats.”
It’s amazing the way uncalled-for
meanness warmed my loathsome little
heart. It’s a strategy I’ve followed, perhaps
at my peril, when my friends go through
similar scenarios. I know it’s childish and
lame, but you’re allowed to be a miserable
shit for a while after you get dumped.r
ecently someone who still
knows Erika mentioned her to
me. I cringed: that bitch. “You
know she still thinks you’re
pi s se d at her,” my a c qua i nt a nc e sa id. Th i s
gave me pause. She still thinks what?
How does she even know me? I was 20, a
mousy girl she met one time. Suddenly, I
realized, Oh my God, I’m not pissed at her.
I’m so not pissed at her. I literally have no
feelings about her. In fact I don’t think I’d
recognize her if I fell over her! Oh, hello,
fully dimensional human, you’re free to
leave my brain now!
It was a real lesson in my endless capac-
ity to hold a grudge. I do it so well, I don’teven notice that it’s happening. I walk
around with these calcified resentments
for years until someone points them out
and I can go: “Good Lord, is that still in
here? Let’s get rid of that. And throw out
‘pretending that watching boys play video
games is fun’ while we’re at it.”
I had to take a moment to wonder
who else fell into this categor y of default
enemy. I went through a list of people
who, in theory, I’d want to hit in the face
with a meat tenderizer. You, the coworker
from 10 years ago who owes me, like,
three grand? It was 10 years ago! You were
addicted to Ox yContin! Go! Be free! Myseventh-grade teacher, who told me that
most child actors don’t succeed as adult
actors? You just wanted to scare me into
having a backup plan! Farewell! Good
luck! Tori from fourth grade, who accused
me of writing mean stuff about all our
friends on the playground wall? BURN IN
HELL, TORI. I KNOW IT WA S YOU!!!
I’m still working on it.Anna Kendrick stars in The Accountant
and is a voice in Trolls. This is adapted
from her book, Scrappy Little Nobody.“It’s amazing the way
uncalled-for meanness
warmed my loathsome
little heart.”