Maybe You Should Talk to Someon - Lori Gottlieb Page 0,47

the cover. Then I imagined these people walking into their empty houses, each one turning on the lights, heating up a frozen dinner or ordering takeout for one, sitting down to eat, and flipping through this magazine’s pages, wondering, How did this become my life? I figured the people who had moved on from their divorces were doing something other than reading this magazine and that the majority of subscribers would be people like me, newly smarting and trying to make sense of it all.

Of course, I hadn’t married Boyfriend, so this wasn’t a divorce. But we were supposed to get married, which, according to my thinking at that moment, put me in a similar category. I even felt that this breakup might be worse than a divorce in one particular aspect. In a divorce, things have gone badly already, thus leading to the split. If you’re going to mourn a loss, isn’t it better to have an arsenal of unpleasant memories—stony silences, screaming fights, infidelity, massive disappointment—to temper the good ones? Isn’t it harder to let go of a relationship filled with happy memories?

It seemed to me the answer was yes.

So I was sitting at the table eating a yogurt and scanning the magazine’s headlines (“Healing from Rejection”; “Managing Negative Thoughts”; “Creating the New You!”) when my phone beeped, indicating that an email had come in. It was not, as I still (delusionally) hoped, from Boyfriend. The subject line read Prepare for the best night ever! Spam, I assumed—but if it wasn’t, who was I to turn down the best night ever, given how bad I felt?

I clicked on it and saw that the email was a confirmation for the concert tickets I’d ordered months in advance as a surprise for Boyfriend’s upcoming birthday. We both loved this band, and their music had been like a soundtrack to our relationship. On our first date, we discovered that we had the same all-time-favorite song. I couldn’t imagine going to this concert with anyone but Boyfriend—especially on his birthday. Should I go? With whom? And wouldn’t I be thinking about him on his birthday? Which raised the questions: Would he be thinking about me? And if not, didn’t I mean anything to him? I looked back at the Divorce headline: “Managing Negative Thoughts.”

I was finding it hard to manage my negative thoughts because, outside of Wendell’s office, they didn’t have much of an outlet. Breakups tend to fall into the category of silent losses, less tangible to other people. You have a miscarriage, but you didn’t lose a baby. You have a breakup, but you didn’t lose a spouse. So friends assume that you’ll move on relatively quickly, and things like these concert tickets become an almost welcome external acknowledgment of your loss—not only of the person but of the time and company and daily routines, of the private jokes and references, and of the shared memories that now are yours alone to carry.

I fully intend to say all this to Wendell as I get comfortable on the couch, but instead all that comes out is a torrent of tears.

Through the blur, I see the tissue box soaring toward me. Once again, I miss the catch. (In addition to being dumped, I think, I’ve become uncoordinated.)

I’m both surprised by and ashamed of my outburst—we haven’t even greeted each other yet—and every time I try to pull it together, I get in a quick “I’m sorry” before I lose it again. For about five minutes, my session goes like this: Cry. Try to stop. Say, I’m sorry. Cry. Try to stop. Say, I’m sorry. Cry. Try to stop. Say, Oh God, I’m really sorry.

Wendell wants to know what I’m apologizing for.

I point to myself. “Look at me!” I make loud honking noises into a tissue.

Wendell shrugs as if to say, Well, yeah—and so what?

And then I don’t even pause to say “I’m sorry”; it’s just cry. Try to stop. Cry. Try to stop. Cry. Try to stop.

This goes on for another few minutes.

While I’m crying, I think about how the morning after the breakup, after a sleepless night, I got out of bed and went on with my daily life.

I remember how I dropped Zach off at school and said, “Love you,” as he jumped out of the car, and he looked around to make sure nobody could hear and then said, “Love you!” before running off to join his friends.

I think about how on the drive to work, I replayed Jen’s