"There's No Angry Way to Say..... Bubbles"

Why?

"I'm too old for this!", cried Claire a 37-year-old Research professor to her friend Jane. "This shouldn't be happening to me anymore! This is a problem for teenagers or twenty something people!", she said in between sobs.

"Shhhh....", Jane said as she consoled her friend. "Don't say that. Problems of the heart do not choose any age group."

The summary of why Claire was crying.

Claire met this English professor 5 years her junior at the university where they both teach. They became friends, he even asked her for help with his thesis, long and short of it, she fell for him only to find out he's taken.

That was three years ago.

Claire had already accepted that she was fated to be single. No romantic inclinations of any kind. She was done with all that. After she turned 30, and was still single she knew that she was not destined to find the "one". There was no "one". Let everybody else enjoy that thing called "romance". That is NOT for her. Not anymore anyway.

Then he came along. She'll be turning 40 and just when she thought she was finally safe from all the "bruhaha" of romance, he came along.

He was 32, she was 37. He was attractive, smart and charming.

Charming. Oh yes indeed, charming. That was her downfall.

Not that they ever dated. Not that he ever directly admitted anything, but there was something.

And that something led to confusion. That confusion led to expectations. Expectations led to undue and unwanted attention, until finally, a broken heart.

For three years she endured being his friend and colleague, all the while telling herself they could never be any more than those two things. No matter how close they may have become in the three years they've worked together teaching in the university, she knew they can never be. But convincing yourself of something and to actually accept what really was were totally two different things.

But she enjoyed the friendship. After crying her heart out to her best friend Jane three years ago on one of the benches in the campus, she was finally able to find a way to just enjoy their closeness without expecting anything else from him. Or so she thought.

He suddenly became moody, and they were not talking or hanging out as they used to. She asked him if she did anything wrong. He reassured her that they were okay. He was just really busy and had been under a lot pressure to prove himself to the faculty and the board. Being the youngest among the faculty, most of them see him only as an inexperienced pretty boy who only got in because of certain "strings" that got pulled.

And so for months this was their norm. They still talk, he would still consult her from time to time, but things were really different now.

You'd think at her age this would not affect her. Not get her frustrated. But it did. She was getting more and more disappointed whenever he would fail to text or call back. More and more upset whenever he would fail to do what she thought he ought to do.

These things made her angry. Made her cry. Made her question why.

"Claire," Jane began. "Is Sean your boyfriend?"

"Of course not!"

"Are you his girlfriend?"

"No! I never thought I was!"

"Then why are you acting like you are?"

That made her stop. That made her think. That made her realize. And that was it.