This weekend I’m going on a trip to the Grand Canyon. I’ve wanted to go to the Grand Canyon for some time now and this is the second time I’ve booked the trip. The last time I was supposed to go was in October of 2009 because I heard the changing of the leaves made the view even more extraordinary. I had planned to go with my current flame, Brett, but only one of us made it out there.

Exactly one week before we were to leave, a Friday night, I made one of my final attempts to break up with him. Things hadn’t been going well with us and I was trying to understand things from his perspective. We sat on the steps of his vacant house in Madison, as we’d come back to visit for the weekend to go to the Badgers football game. It wasn’t really finalized, but we were both recognizing that we wanted different things in life. There were no tears shed, just calm conversation. We had always been more friends than lovers and the lack of passion was evident even in our fights.

The following day we went to the Badgers football game, in our typical tradition. While there, Brett’s best friend, Thompson’s exgirlfriend from high school showed up (did you catch all that?). We were hanging out with Thompson, among other people. Well, this exgirlfriend also brought a friend who was also single. (I should mention Thompson, however, was not.) Both the girls were super rude to me as I was the only girl there hanging out. I didn’t think much of it. One of our single friends, Tito, was with us and tried striking up a conversation with the girls. They blew him off as well. The friend made it very clear to Thompson that she was interested in Brett. Thompson made it very clear to her that Brett wasn’t single.

After the game we stopped at a bar to tailgate and the girls somehow found their way back to our group of friends and the flirting began. At one point in time I saw Brett with his cell phone out as he was talking to this friend, Steffi. I walked over to see what was going on and he told me that he was texting his grandmother. Who’s almost 90. Apparently Steffi had just moved back to Madison from Arizona and he wanted to ask his grandmother something about Arizona. I had my suspicions, but I didn’t let it get to me. We left that bar and continued barhopping and meeting up with some friends. However, we couldn’t seem to shake those girls. Around midnight I left to go home so that I could catch an early flight out the next morning for Toronto. Brett walked me out of the bar, but opted to stay with his friends since he didn’t get to see them a lot since we left Madison. The next morning he bid me farewell and it was my last time ever seeing Brett.

On Tuesday I got a job offer from a company down in the Quad Cities, where we’d been living. I didn’t want the job, nor did I want to be down there permanently. Brett also knew this. I told him of the job offer while he was at work. I was getting ready to start conducting a sales training that afternoon, so we didn’t have long to talk. 30 seconds before I started the training I received an email from Brett saying that we should break up. During breaks I would try to email him back, asking if he wanted to talk and to see what was up. That evening, between the training and the dinner, I called Brett and chatted briefly with him. He said that in knowing I couldn’t give him my full support and blessing for him to continue his dream of competing in Ironmans that he didn’t think it was going to work. It seemed like a practical answer as we’d been talking about it quite frequently; his training season had just ended and the stress on our relationship was enough to make me incapable to support him in future trainings.

The next day, Wednesday, I contacted American Airlines to receive a credit for the flights on Friday. I’d considered still taking the trip and doing it alone, but decided instead to use that time to pack up all my things. I had paid for both the tickets on my credit card, so the flight credit was issued back to me. Later that afternoon I got a call from American Airlines. Apparently someone was trying to reinstate the tickets. I learned after calling Brett that he still wanted to go on the trip and said he was going to do it alone, which seemed very unlike him. After some further probing I found out he was actually going to be going on our trip with Steffi. Apparently they had their first date the day I left for Canada and had been making plans. She had some stuff in storage still out in Arizona, so they were going to fly out there together and then drive back with a U-Haul. I was immediately nauseas. Granted, things hadn’t worked out with him, but I was in no way prepared for him to have already moved on from things.

I didn’t have to wonder how the trip went as Steffi posted pictures all over Facebook. I never had to see the pictures as the reaction from all our mutual friends was enough for me. Unfortunately I allowed this to taint my desire to see the Grand Canyon. Or at least until now. I’ll be taking a solo trip on Saturday and Sunday to check out the Grand Canyon and all its glory…while being able to reflect on how fortunate I am that fate was working in my favor.