Wut Wut Life?

So I'm back in my hometown to visit my parents. I hadn't told them about the breakup. It was easy to avoid the subject when I was 400 miles away at the other end of California, communicating by text. Before I went on the trip home mom asked me on WeChat if my boyfriend was coming with me this visit. I typed "Just me." Which was technically not a lie. Not the case when I am physically at the same room as my mom.  She asked how the boyfriend was doing, and I told her we broke up. She asked why, and I realized I lacked the Chinese vocabulary to explain it to her properly. I tried to explain that there was a communication issue, but that didn't quite work out. So the end explanation was something akin to he didn't think I doted on him enough, and he thought it was too hard to talk to me about it to fix it.  That was good enough. It wasn't going to change anything anyway. I held my breath for what I knew was coming. Low grade blame game. It was going to...

I'm enraged.  I was out to dinner with a mutual friend of my ex's. I value her friendship and I told her I wanted to be friends if she was up to it, no matter what went down with my ex (they were friends first). She's a cool person and we have a lot in common. Even before the breakup, she and I hung out and went places together. I valued her friendship, not for some gateway back to my ex or whatever.  So I'm at dinner with her and she mentioned the ex in passing about some topic that came up. No big deal, I treat it just as if she brought up whoever in the course of conversation and don't act any differently, because it really felt fine.  I'm not going to hear his name and shatter. Maybe like a month ago, but not now. She still carpools with him and is friends with him and I have no feelings one way or another about that. I respect her enough to accept that she doesn't have to sensor what she says about her life, her friends, etc.  Then she brough...