The Top Five All Time Breakup List

1. J. was my first boyfriend, so by law must be ranked as number one. Before that first boy, your heart is all shiny and new, full of hope and too many teen movies. That first boy is so exciting, everything is all fresh and interesting, and cynicism has yet to unroll it's sleeping bag and take up camp in your head. When you get your first "real" boyfriend, everything is defined within this new reality - first "real" date, first "real" kiss, first "official" walk hand in hand to homeroom as a couple. The first boy doesn't have to compete with anyone else for space to etch their name on your psyche. So, for that, he gets the coveted top spot. Well, that and the fact he broke up with me during a school dance. Being dumped by your first boyfriend in public at the Spring Fling is asking too much for the teenaged heart to bear. On the upside, as he did dump me in public, it meant I got to cry in the girl's bathroom while girls who would normally never deign to speak to me offered me hugs and lip gloss. After all, crying in the girl's washroom is a rite of passage up there with sneaking out of your bedroom window to meet the boy who will eventually make you cry in the girl's washroom, right?

2. T. He thinks he should be listed first, as our break up was terribly sad and traumatic, and probably he should, but he loses points because we are now great friends and he was in my wedding party. This means I can't claim total emotional scarring and mental trauma while in the pub comparing war stories, because he is usually there to make sure I don't exaggerate too much, and what fun is that? We dated for about two years. Apparently, to this day, people persistently believe I broke up with him and shattered him forever, turning him into the bitter and twisted man he is today. Sorry folks, he was that way when I found him. For the record, he broke up with me. Not only that, but he woke me up at 2am so he could tell me he was breaking up with me, and walk out the door and out of my life five minutes later. Though, in all truth, the out of my life part didn't last that long. Funny thing is, it took twice as long as we actually spent dating to get our non-dating relationship to the point of friends who *don't* annoy the crap out of each other at every opportunity.

3. Third in the list is another T. Sigh. You know, it's probably a good thing he broke my heart, because I get to remember how fabulously cool he was before he grew up and became boring. So boring. White picket fence and goin' huntin' deer boring. So sad. In high school, he was the coolest. So very pretty, with a motorcycle and the aura of danger faintly clinging to his leather jacket. He was older, old enough to be interesting, but not too old, because that's just plain creepy. Sadly, we had nothing in common other than being attracted to one another - not politics, religion, movies, music or books - he liked hunting, and I was a vegetarian. Of course, when you are young, the "attracted to each other" part is the only one that matters. So our relationship progressed for several months, and then, one sunny afternoon on my parent's back porch, he broke up with me. I learned later that he was apparently afraid that he loved me more than I did him. This was my introduction to the "hurt someone else in order to save oneself from theoretical future hurt" concept of relationships.

4. D. has the distinction of having spawned an entire theory. The theory goes that every girl has to date a crazy person at some point in their lives, however brief, to understand what crazy truly is. This is preferably done before the girl is old enough to get married or something equally as permanent. At this point, the girl has a choice. To continue to date crazy people, and wonder why all men suck so much, or to decide that crazy is a lot more fun from behind a bag of popcorn at the theatre than it is when it is standing at your door at 7pm on a Friday night. D. holds that honour. He broke up with me on Christmas Day - he gave me my Christmas present and then said; "Oh, by the way...." How very sweet. The next week he was going to the movies with one of my best friends.

He was the person who made me realize that as much as I like a little delightful eccentricity, full stop insane wasn't my cup of tea. Sadly, I also chose him to learn another important dating truth: stupid on and off again relationships are like day old donuts - stale and crumbly, and never improve with age. Not only was there the Christmas Day breakup, there was the day before Valentine's Day break up and the long distance phone break up from England. That was expensive. About there it got boring, and I let him go and break up a couple of dozen times with his old girlfriend. Apparently she hadn't taken any little epiphanies out of the first ten times they dated.

I am sure you are amazed I actually dated this guy more than once. I admit, it took me a little longer to figure out the truth about crazy than it should have - I claim being sixteen as my excuse. Sixteen has far too many cultural connotations attached to it in our society, and I truly believe that it would have been best if I had spend that year buried in the backyard, and arranged to be dug up the day after my seventeenth birthday.

5. Brian wasn�t horribly traumatic, but rates as number five for the simple fact that he claimed he broke up with me because I had cut my hair. With an excuse like that, he deserves to be immortalized.