Illustration by Raquel
We don’t talk. She can’t, so I won’t. And that’s it.
Which is why my heart thumped like my mother testing a watermelon when she showed up in my inbox. I took a deep breath to brace myself and read the subject line:
Invitation to connect on LinkedIn
Just like that, a form email from a website I don’t even use filled my ears with her voice and pushed my tongue against her crooked teeth. An automated message, practically anonymous, triggered the emotional memory of a hundred emails breathlessly written, dizzily read.
If I search her name in my Gmail account, I’ll find all those notes with YouTube links and articles. I’ll find the photos my friend Caleb took of us for his class project, the ones that show how in love I was even before I knew it. I’ll find the longing messages we sent after we “broke up” because I moved away that all end with “I love you” — and then, suddenly, the emails we sent when we tried to stay friends after she moved on and left me behind. More recently, I’ll find the unanswered letters I sent to her trying desperately to make sense of the cavernous ache in my heart. I’ll find evidence that I sent a link to Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright” and told her I dedicated the last verse to her (Goodbye is too good a word, babe.)
I sent her one last email on December 31, 2013 to tell her sorry and that I’d always care. At midnight, I whiskey-cried at our favorite bar in front of all our mutual friends. In the light of day, while I drank 2014’s mimosas made with 2013’s sangria, I got as close to over it as a person can get through simply deciding. And yet, I trembled to see her name in my inbox for the first time in a year. Suddenly she’s back in my dreams.
This is the great fuckery of falling out of love in the age of technology: So many invisible threads hold us together. She lingers forever in my profile picture album and my iMessage logs. Even when I try to avoid these archives, a robot can coopt her name and remind me just what it felt like to love her.
We met the night after I called myself queer for the first time, and she took me back to her co-op where I kicked off my shiny wingtip shoes and everything that happened next was as fumbling as you might suppose. I already had my ticket to leave for Nicaragua in four months, but I didn’t see the harm in a casual, fun thing to distract me from my senior thesis. This was the rookiest of all rookie mistakes. We saw Tegan & Sara together at SXSW. She taught me to polka dance. We drank Four Roses Bourbon from the bottle and made out in a doorway. We cooked lentils and admired men’s hats together. I introduced her to my parents (my mom knew she was my girlfriend; my stepdad didn’t). In these mundane acts, I learned to be queer. That is to say, I learned to be myself.
The last thing she said to me in person was “I love you” for the first time. Seconds later, she sprinted away to catch the bus to Houston; days later I boarded a plane for Managua. We didn’t know her mouth wasn’t big enough to hold those words.
In a tidier tale, I’d say “And that was the end.” But it wasn’t, of course. We had email to share pictures, Facebook chat to fill in for texting, and Skype for sex and remembering each other’s voices. We talked every day I could get Internet access, and it kept my heart rooted in Texas and my fingers laced through hers. After it ended for real, I was determined to keep in touch and maybe even be friends.
I’ve maintained decade-long international friendships through AIM, Facebook and email, so our contact felt natural, took only seconds. I’d send her pictures of piglets I met in my work in rural areas, and she’d send me songs I had to hear. It was so easy until it wasn’t: Until my resentment exceeded my love for her, until her fear exceeded her hope. But the world we made lingers. The moon is always full there; the popcorn is always fresh. I can never pretend I didn’t love her, because that beloved version of her remains frozen in cyberspace like so many selfies.
These days, all dating is online dating. Clean breaks don’t jive with the way we use technology. I hid her on Facebook, but she pops up in my feed when mutual friends tag her in photos. I unstarred the mix CD she made me (the one with Joshua Radin’s “A Fear You Won’t Fall” and John Mayer’s “Slow Dancing In A Burning Room” back to back — a truly prescient combo), but I still see her songs in iTunes when I listen to Cat Power and Sigur Ros. I took her photo off my wall, but she peppers my iPhoto archives. And since she passively lingers, it’s so easy to take the next step and check her newsfeed to find out about her trip to Europe. It’s so easy to send her a chat asking if she heard Brittney Griner got engaged. It’s so easy to see that she read it and didn’t respond.
It’s so hard to let go in a world where social media thrives on nostalgia and insists we stick together. She and I created a life together, and so much of it remains in the cloud. Sure, I could get a lot closer to purging her, but that’s not how we learn to use the cloud, or how I do anything. My mother taught me to be a packrat, and tech folks insist we back up everything in three places — just in case. I remain Facebook friends with the kid I hated in my 11th grade English class; why would I defriend the person who helped bring me to life? I have at least 100 expired REI coupons in my inbox; why would I delete all those I love yous?
Why get rid of something forever when it costs me nothing to keep it? I might need it later. I might need a reminder that I have a beating heart after all.
A few weeks after the LinkedIn email, she contacted me directly for the first time in half a year. She called me my middle name, Faye, a relic from the days when we were each other’s person and such intimacies lit my skin on fire. I saw it in my messages folder but didn’t open the chat so she wouldn’t get the “read” notification. It feels kinder to let her think I just missed it somehow. Meanwhile, I’m waiting for the follow up email from LinkedIn reminding me it’s not too late to connect.
Audrey, this is beautiful and heart wrenching and totally worth pausing the Season 5 Premiere of Gilmore Girls!!!
This made tears spring up in my eyes before I even got to the paywall. It was the push I need to finally become an A+ member! I’m still healing from a breakup and sometimes I like to walk up to a story like this to let the pain of it hit me again, though other weeks if someone so much hints at anything having to do with heartbreak (sorry, Tegan & Sara, I dunno if I can ever listen to you guys again).
Audrey, this was really beautifully written and totally spoke to my broken heart — “We don’t talk. She can’t, so I won’t” hit me so hard and I hope writing this gave you an alternative way to work through the loss of the relationship when you can’t talk about it with her.
So poignant and beautiful. <3
Gawd, Audrey, I just stopped breathing for a minute there. I had to remind myself to breathe, reading this, feeling it.
I randomly went looking for a chain of emails between me and the first girl I had girl-sex with the other day, in an old email account I don’t use anymore. I went looking because I was thinking of her and I realized that I couldn’t recall her last name. I can remember the smell of her and the freckles on her arms and the movie we were watching, but not her last name. Well, my super-old email account still existed and after going through a labyrinth of password reset steps, I got in there and found…all my old messages had been auto-deleted years ago. I don’t know why it even matters. I guess it doesn’t. But it was so sad. I felt so sad that I could never get it back. What is the interweb for, if not for keeping these thin, electric strings of connection to our lost lovers.
Anyway, thank you for writing this, that so many of us can relate to in some way.
This is beautiful too. Where is the line between honoring and haunting, with memory…or is it all blurred?
KaeLyn, I can’t imagine how i would feel if I suddenly couldn’t get all those emails back. These time capsules can be hell, but so necessary too.
Oof, this got me. It still throws me when I dream of her and then wake up realizing that we’re complete strangers 4 years later.
This is so beautiful and honest and spoke to me. Thank you so much for sharing!
Oh Audrey –
You hit me hard with this one. It’s so beautiful.
I’m going through a breakup and your words remind me that all this intensity I’m feeling isn’t just my crazy ex-girlfriend brain at work.
Thank you so much for putting my thoughts into words. <3
I’ve been with my person now for eleven years. Which means all my previous relationships predate my Facebook and Gmail and Instagram. I have some letters and photo albums and an actual mix tape in a box in the attic. I am Facebook friends with all my exes but our Facebook friendship has only ever been as friends. I didn’t realize how complex the cloud relationship strings are – thanks for this beautiful piece.
Oh, my heart…
Yes, yes, yes. I feel like my story is so similar that I could have written this, but you put it so much more beautifully than I ever could. Thank you
Ugh. I love you.
ditto. sigh.
y’all are the stars of my heart <3
So many feels right now about past persons you guys. Jeez…Audrey that got my heart pumping and my breathing stopped for a sec or two. Its so beautifully written its painful. I feel like its a thing I should send my former self. Not that I would change what I have now though..
Im sure a lot of us were at a time like this. Saving things…not looking but seeing. Hearing and trying not to listen. There are memories that will always be painful. Songs that will seem like they remind you..little things that pop up when you least expect it.
Sometimes silence is what burns the bridges that we have.
Thank you for this. I read the opener and immediately bought an A+ membership.
I’m 3 weeks post-breakup/rejection, and hurting like hell. I’m mourning almost 10 years of loving a person more deeply than I ever thought possible. She was the one who taught me what healthy love and trust should feel like, and also the one who opened my eyes to my queerness. Like you’ve described, she’s left little reminders of herself braided all through my life, and it feels like I can’t take two steps without walking right into the pain of remembering.
I’m afraid I’ll never really move on from her. I can’t imagine loving anyone so completely, ever again. It’s good to know there are others who understand and it’s not just me.
I know these feels and you put them into words so eloquently. Thank you. <3
This was so true. Thanks. I’m not sure I was ready to read this, but I needed it. So honest and beautiful.
This was truly touching. And this is why I’m relieved that my partner of three years who I just left was not a tech/internet person. Wow.
I’m not sure if I’ve ever read something on AS that has resonated with me on such a deep, visceral level. The break-up this brings to mind for me isn’t recent but in this moment, it feels as if it just happened all over again. I remember having to go to such lengths to digitally separate from my ex (burying photos of the 2 of us deep in iPhoto, unfollowing her & her friends on all social media platforms, etc.). Long-distance relationships especially seem to breed this digital trail that is so, so onerous to scrub – you can’t just take all the digital objects that remind you of her and put them far in the back of your closet like you could with physical things such as letters and gifts and the like. Technology is such a double-edged sword.
Like a couple of other people have said, I read the first few lines and finally sprung for the A+ membership I’ve been promising myself for weeks…anyway.
This cuts so deeply for me. I’m still reeling from a situation (:/) I had with somebody a while ago, and I think part of why it’s been so tough for me is that on Facebook, on Twitter, they’re *almost* right there, like I could *almost* reach out and touch them. Even though I can’t. Even though I won’t. I could live it all again if I just scrolled down far enough in iMessage. So.
This was really lovely, thank you so much for sharing it.
This made my heart pound a little bit. I think it’s a little scary how much I can relate to this, down to random details.
This is kind of an older post now but one that (apparently like a few others here!) really made me want to join A+ when I saw the preview.
I’m a year post-breakup and it STILL stings and this captured it beautifully. Especially:
“I might need a reminder that I have a beating heart after all.”
Sometimes I think I torture myself with the digital reminders (facebook is the worst) and the memories because I need a reminder that I felt all those amazing feels (particularly for a woman). That I was with someone, that she liked me, was attracted to me, that she thought me desirable enough. It’s a spiral of self-loathing that I shouldn’t indulge, but it’s difficult not to.
Oh my gosh. All the feels..
sigh
I’m so honored to know you and call you a friend, bee, cabinmate. <3
I don’t think any piece of writing ever made me cry so much. I’m still crying. <3