Post Mortem
There are no songs written for the bad guy in the break-up.
Last week, Bleachers released new music for the first time in what feels like forever. When the band’s third album was coming out, I had moved back in with my mom because of the pandemic, and now I have my own apartment and a 401k.
Their music was central to the relationship that I ended a few months ago.
When we had just started dating, I remember saying to him that if we ever broke up it would ruin Bleachers for me. Tonight, I can’t help but think of him listening to the song on repeat, and how we’ve both been waiting for this release for longer than we dated. I wonder if he knows that I adopted a cat, and if that hurts his feelings. He was violently allergic to them, and it always made me sad that I couldn’t have one if we were together.
I love my kitten so much. And I don’t regret the break-up. I agonized internally for weeks before I did it, trying to convince myself that we were just living in a liminal space the summer after graduation and that my doubts were baseless. I have a self-sabotaging streak in me, and I didn’t want him to be a needless casualty.
We started dating a month before graduation after flirting on and off for four years. We’d hurt each others feelings and known other people. But we finally decided to stop playing it safe and at least give oxygen to the spark between us. Part of me didn’t want to date him because I knew I could fall in love with him. And I did. I fell hard and fast.
But then we both went to Paris. He took me on this wonderful birthday trip to Bordeaux, a respite from the soul-deep exhaustion of the summer—managing a bookstore and the boss who was bullying my friends and me, younger girls I felt the maternal need to protect from a man with a history of dating female employees who are decades younger than he is. On top of that, I didn’t know where I would live or work once my tourist visa expired. All my free time after working more than 50 hours a week at the store was spent applying to jobs—or with my boyfriend.
It was the well-intended rush of a shared first love from him, I know, and I don’t fault him for why things went awry. He would talk about the wine list for our wedding, the vineyards he wanted to buy when we retired, in what religious tradition we would raise our children. I liked the idea of the life he laid out for me, but not the fact that it seemed like a foregone conclusion. Even talk of where we would spend the holidays this winter was disconcerting. We had been together for all of two months.
Sure, we met each other’s families after the first month, so things moved quickly, but that didn’t mean I wanted to live together, in my tiny studio apartment with a pull-out couch for a bed. I tried explaining to him that I needed my own space after working on my feet all day, fielding customers in two different languages. I didn’t know when I had promised myself away. I liked being young and in love (and in Paris, of all places), but I wanted to be young, first.
And then, after only a week or two back in America, a certain calm settled over me one night as I fell asleep. I knew then that breaking up was the right thing to do. Even as I was in the middle of it—which was one of the worst things I’ve ever had to do, 10/10 would not recommend breaking someone’s heart—I knew it was right. And I knew if I could survive it, that I would feel relief.
I’d never been through a break-up before—either side of one. I’ve consumed plenty of media, however, about the wronged woman, broken up with out of the blue for incomprehensible reasons, crying into a pint of Ben & Jerry’s in her bed, hair a mess from not showering for days. There are no rom-coms about a girl overcoming the self-inflicted kind of heartbreak, the healing kind. There are no songs written for the bad guy in the break-up.
Even “the 1”—another favorite Taylor Swift song—has an element of longing as well as spite. And while I don’t long for him, I continue to feel so, so guilty for hurting him. I’ve heard from friends who barely know him that he’s apparently still “torn up about it.” (I don’t know what reason that combination of people had to be talking about me, but that’s his prerogative, and this is mine.)
No, more accurate would be “Midnight Rain”: “I broke his heart ‘cause he was nice.” On paper, he had everything that I wanted in a lasting relationship—integrity, class, taste, ambition, kindness, humor, similar goals, and the ability to share with me the kind of life I’ve always wanted. He had already bought two sets of season tickets to Texas Football and Broadway In Austin, for which I was the presumptive plus-one, and we had plans to try every wine bar in the area.
But I love being independent in Austin, even if it was once our city. I work hard and still have plenty of free time for the first time in my life. I’m recovering from years of burnout. I signed up to volunteer with a local nonprofit that teaches writing in under-resourced schools, and I’m meeting new people at book clubs and bars. I love going to work functions, the same ones we’d talked about attending as a couple.
I had an unexpected close encounter with him at the first alumni tailgate of the football season, which I work as a Texas Exes employee. I guess I must have mentioned that fact while we were dating because as I was moving materials at the end of the day, tucked behind a temporary construction barrier by a staff-only elevator, I watched him walk past.
It made very little sense to me that he would be there. Of all the places a 22-year-old could tailgate in Austin, the Alumni Center would not be super high on my list. I’m probably not supposed to say that as an employee, but it tends to be mostly families and older alumni. My guess is he was there to see me. Maybe he did before I turned into the elevator. I was on edge for hours after that.
This whole thing messed with me, too, I realized then. I had vowed to start going on dates again right after the break-up. I wanted to experience casual dating for the first time in my life. But after backing out of a Hinge date only half an hour before our reservation because I was fully having a panic attack at the thought of meeting someone new, I decided it was too soon.
I don’t really know how to talk to men. After having many difficult conversations with my dad over the years, finally confronting my boss at the bookstore, and then breaking up with my ex, my track record isn’t great. I think the endeavor sends me into fight-or-flight mode. The break-up itself was horrible. He was completely caught off guard, even though I’d been deflecting plans and not responding to texts over the weekend. He should have known. I should have known better. But even as I was walking him out, he was heartbreakingly kind.
I feel defensive about how fast everything happened. I felt this irrational need to at least give it three months, which is how long he’d dated my best friend a few years ago. Any shorter than that, and I would have been even more embarrassed to admit that we had broken up almost as quickly as we had fallen in love.
I think it was love. I really do. He was so kind to me, and I think he saw the best and worst parts of me and liked me anyway. I felt safe with him. I first knew I was feeling really deeply about him when I was having a panic attack (a theme!) one day in the spring and wished he were there with me.
Then over the summer, I didn’t feel safe around him anymore. I’m sure his friends—our mutual friends—think I was inexplicably cruel. But I felt like I had to hide parts of myself from him so that I could have something for myself.
I wish that I hadn’t cast myself as the bad guy, even though I gave him permission to be mad at me. And he was, not that he needed my permission. I wish I didn’t feel so fucking guilty. I did what was right for me and what I feel was ultimately right for the both of us. I wish I didn’t still think about him like this, with a tightness in my chest. Writing this has made me feel sick all over again, but I need to excise it—him, us—from me.
So I needed this new Bleachers song. He can lay no claim to it. I will dance to it in my car, in the shower, and not think of him. I hope he doesn’t think of me either—if not now, then someday.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Here is a playlist for when you are the bad guy in the break-up.
