This thing hurts like hell

I knew his name two years ago, but now I just call him Her Ex--for his part, I suspect he doesn't know to call me anything. We met once, briefly, at one of C's parties. I'd had too much wine and what Dearly Departed DFW called "too much fun," and between the two, I told everyone I "had motion blur turned on," which is a video game joke. I recall telling C that I wasn't going to stop until I "encountered an illegal exception." Which is another computer joke that I thought (still think, too) was hilarious, except C, who studied English (who knows if he still does), didn't get it, and he just kind of narrowed his eyes at me. And I was busy convincing myself that I hadn't yet had enough too much fun when J, Her-Not-Yet-Ex wrapped around neck and waist, found me and said hello and goodbye, which I assumed was a sign from God that there was, indeed, no such thing as too much fun. Two hours after that, I returned to my dorm with dirt in my blood and a hidden spot of rouge and a bitter drip and found Her Ex in my room; my roommate, Z, had invited him in because J was "composing herself" in her room next door, and Z wasn't in the know yet. He and Z chatted, and I sat on my bed joggling my knee. J came in after a few minutes and asked if Her Ex was ready to watch Fight Club, which he was, and an hour later, my knee-joggling had moved to finger-drumming, Z had gone out again, J wailed and thumped the wall, and I craved cigarettes and whiskey and fun, and I ended up getting the first but also ended up falling down a hill and twisting an ankle. Two weeks later the grapevine said that J'd gotten into a spat with Her Ex, and that he could, finally, justifiably be called Her Ex. A week after I heard that, I stopped having fun entirely and just got really strung out. And a month after that, J knocked on my door Thursday night, just before spring break, and asked to use my printer. She looked up directions on Google Maps to some town in Oregon that I'd never heard of. She had friends there. "If anyone asks," she said, "tell them that's where I am. But don't bring it up unless they ask." I didn't know who she was thinking of when she said "they," but I agreed. I saw her again the following Wednesday. I was going to the cafe for a late afternoon bagel and coffee. She was in the dorm hallway, just getting back from her roadtrip, and I said hello. J told me she'd gone to Oregon to die, but somehow, she said, she'd been too weak to accomplish even that. And another time, way before any of this, she said she loved me, and I said I loved her. "But at least you're not in love with me," she said. I didn't correct her, but I think she knew anyway. Maybe, I tell myself sometimes, this was her way of saying no, of rejecting me gently, and I just didn't get it.