A Body Glowing

Breakups are miserable and rich - April 2023

Last night before we broke up, you helped me get a moth out of my room. It was huge; there’s some kind of moth migration going on and they’re showing up everywhere. This massive, sporadic flier suddenly appeared on my wall and then fluttered down to where my lamp was shining right above my pillows. “Turn off your light,” you said, “I’ll lure it out.”

You didn’t come over knowing we’d break up. I didn’t invite you over thinking we would. 

I was nervous—I’m not a fan of bugs. But I turned off the light as you opened my bedroom door and turned on your phone’s flash. At first, the moth didn’t seem to care. But you approached it, letting the door shut for a moment as you reached towards the moth. 

Bringing the light to the creature, it couldn’t resist.

It started to zip around, moving toward the lightsource as you backed away. You opened the door. The hardest part was getting it out the doorway. But you kept at it, and eventually, it left. The door shut behind you as you beckoned the moth deeper into the hallway. You came in a moment later, sneaking through the door because you were afraid if it opened too wide the bug would rush back in. “It was probably born in here,” you told me, “that will be bad for your clothes.” I laughed it off, and you looked serious. You meant it.

I thanked you for saving me from the bug, and we settled in to do homework: me to write about nothing in particular, you to read philosophy about the holocaust that makes my head spin. Recently, you've been upset that we don’t have intellectual conversations. I said we do all the time, I just don’t let you explain each philosophy book in excruciating detail. Was that mean?

Today has been bad, but not too bad. I feel guilty about this. I also feel affirmed that we’ve done the right thing. We broke up almost a year ago this week, right before the music festival on campus. That time, I was so bereft that I had lost my appetite. My friends drove me around Colorado Springs until I saw a restaurant that I thought I could make work. I had a plate of sweet potato fries. It was all I could stomach. We were back together 24 hours later.

Today was different from last time. I woke up very early and I felt horrible, but I couldn’t fall back asleep. I hate to admit it but I looked at your location before I went to go get a muffin because I knew if I ran into you I’d start crying and wouldn’t be able to go to class. You were at the gym. 

You’d be so interested in my class today. I kept a list in my notebook of things I wanted to tell you. Like how the president of our college was probably a terrible lawyer, and it’s a good thing she didn’t go into politics. How the speaker who came to my class doesn’t write unless he has an assignment, and how terrified I am that I will fall into that same cycle (I’ve written one thing not on an assignment, and I was too embarrassed of the content to publish it under my name). How I write because I need to settle the painful parts of life into a corner where they hurt less, cause less harm. I guess that last one is what I’m doing tonight.

I don’t regret anything except for how normal yesterday was. We’ve fought a little bit in the last week or two, but nothing that would hint at the end of our relationship. Yesterday was so unremarkable that I don’t remember most of what happened. We went to the gym and biked, but a few bikes apart from one another so we didn’t really talk. I chatted with you briefly at your work, and you kissed me goodbye. If anything, that was the craziest part of our day. Neither of us really go for public displays of affection.

We talked about how normal our day had been, after we decided to end things, and you were shocked. “There was no gathering of core memories, nothing big happened,” you said. You were regretful about a small detail of our day that I won’t get into here. “It’s sort of symbolic,” I told you, “we haven’t really had much going on lately and that’s part of the problem. The spark has… faded.” You said I was right.

For a while, I was very jealous of your ex-girlfriend. In the first year of our relationship, some time after the 6 month mark, you told me you had a dream with both of us, me and her, in it. You and I were walking through the streets of your hometown in Eugene, and we ran into her. You said I started shouting at her, screaming obscenities and being mean and telling her that I hated her and that she should leave you alone. I still can’t understand why you would tell me such a thing. I said, “you should want to protect me, not her.” You said I was right, and nothing else came from that conversation except for the realization that you were still dreaming about her. How long am I going to be dreaming about you? At some point, I had a dream about your ex too. We ran into her in some department store or restaurant. She was not fully visible, but something undulating and strange. I wonder if I saw my face reflected back in her, a mirror of our future.

I hate moths. The way they die in odd corners or end up in your shoes. The way they get powdery when they get crushed. But I’m glad that we saved that one, and didn’t try to smack at it. I’m glad we spared it of having to watch us weep.

I know that while I’m level-headed right now, at some point the torrent will come. The dam inside of me is swelling already, and it will break at some point. We had an odd rainy day today, and it reminded me of you. The two spring breaks we’ve spent together at your mom’s house in Oregon. I wore a pair of green waterproof pants this evening and remembered how you were there when I bought them. You’ve been such a large part of this last year and a half. I don’t know how I’ll ever do anything again without thinking about you. I’m glad that I don’t feel bittersweet about spring break with you. I’m glad that neither of us is angry. 

I’ve never been a master at goodbyes. Usually, when I know someone is leaving me for a while, I sort of fuck with the relationship unintentionally. So a part of me wonders if this is all just self-sabotage, being afraid of you being away next semester. But today, I can’t help but feel like this is right. As much as it feels terrible to acknowledge, I think we’ve done what’s best for us both. That doesn’t mean I won’t miss you in the fall, but I think it won’t hurt me as much that you’re gone. The pain is happening now, instead of when we are thousands of miles apart. This lets us honor the relationship better, oddly.

I don’t want to keep my thoughts to myself. I want to pour them over you. But this is not for you. This is for me to tuck away the bits that hurt to a place where they make more sense. This is to mitigate, to lessen the pain. 

Since then, moths seem to flock to me. Like I am a body glowing. They were there in the chapel, in the bathrooms and the rafters. They were there in the theatre where I play and perform. They are in my bedroom, again and again. In my neighbor’s bedrooms. How do I tell my friends that their moths are my plague?

When we first started dating, I told you how love songs were gaining new meaning to me. I listened to the songs I’d known and loved for ages and all I heard was you, you, you you you. Now I’m having the same experience with heartbreak. These sad songs are all about me, about us. All those Bon Iver songs have a new potency. It’s beautiful and awful. Everything is making me cry.