Four New Year’s Eves ago I got dumped. Three birthdays ago I also got dumped, exactly one year and four days later, by a different guy for the first of what would later be two separate dumpings. I know, it’s a lot of math for an opening paragraph, but I hope you’ll bear with me.

Actually it was four New Year’s Eve eves ago, but for dramatic purposes I prefer to tell the story with the dumping on the holiday as opposed to about the holiday. It’s neater, more horrifying and narratively tidier.

I had just returned from Texas and even though he had taken me to the airport on my way out of town, he had not called in several days, most notably not even on Christmas itself, and had not offered to pick me up outside of baggage claim or anywhere else for that matter. Expecting very little of both myself and of my paramours, I hadn’t bothered to call him, either, to get a real read on the situation, but had instead been “sitting on my hands” at the advice of a quack therapist that a close friend at the time based most of her life decisions on. A quack who, by the way, has since been on Bravo’s Millionaire Matchmaker, famously telling some poor girl, “men fall in love with virtues, not vaginas!” I totally beg to differ. Bitch may be Patti Stanger’s version of Mr. Miyagi, but I’m still giving her and her advanced old-age quackery my most fervent side-eye.

It was afternoon and I was looking forward to making plans for New Years Eve, even though if you (and by you I mean me) are still planning on making plans with a guy less than 24 hours before New Year’s Eve and he hasn’t brought it up, he’s probably not taking you to the Rainbow Room for dinner. In fact, you may not actually be dating him at all, even if you’re, like, totally sure you are.