The Break Up Chronicles

These are snippets of break up stories that I have seen, heard or lived through. I decided to keep the guy perspectives and stories out because who am I really to understand men in a break up? It's fascinating how much more emotion goes into a break up sometimes then there ever was  in the actual relationship.


…There he was. Her elegance gave way to a quivered hand shake and quick gasp of breath before she leaned in for a kiss on the cheek and the saving face smile, “how have you been?” She really didn’t want to know if he was doing well or terribly, she wanted an exit and she wanted it quick. She swiftly maneuvered herself away trying to brush off the tears that hung close to the fake lashes and the black eyeliner. “Don’t make a mess of things”, she told herself, “carry your pride higher than your hurt and you will be able to move on”.



…He never got back to her… She waited in a frantic state of existence, pacing around, holding the cell phone, throwing it on her bed, biting at the ends of her fingers, then picking it back up again and this time throwing her listless body on the bed with the phone tightly clasped between her hands. Nothing for months happened. The sobering thought of his disappearance from her life just made her want to drunkenly forget. There was sadness in every gulp of vodka. At this point she didn’t know if she was punishing herself or crying out for his attention.


…From summer fling to a new thing, she tried everything in her power to get over him. But as weeks grew to months his thought never escaped her mind. Did she just leave behind the best love? She spoke of him to others like he was still hers, often using the present tense rather that the past to describe what he does, what he likes and what his quirky habits are. When you speak in the present of a past is that the heart saying you still want him, or is that the mind playing tricks on you?


…Those hands that she once held, lips she once kissed and eyes she once gazed into are no longer hers. Why did she allow herself to imagine him with another woman, making her laugh, smile, and feel the way she once did around him? “He belongs to me” she repeated to herself over and over as tears trickled down her skin and onto the pillow. The dark room didn’t help, the music didn’t help, and the emptiness in her heart didn’t help. Only time would.


What happened to the man she used to look up to? He dissolved with a glass of Grey Goose and every drag of the cigarette. She thought it was a temporary escape away from the wraps of the real world he is still adjusting to. Of course everything was a lot easier when all you had to do in college is just pass the class and the night was your mistress. She stood by him then, and she stood by him now. But she cannot stand by him any more.


“And then what?” the dreaded three words her friend asked her. “…and then we lived happily ever after. And you got to be the maid of honor” she wanted to reply to her. But she couldn’t bring herself to say that, because what good are her dreams without a man willing to extend that kind of a promise to her? But the seed of doubt was planted, and she couldn’t help but wonder every night, “and then what?” She became neurotic and anxious around him, throwing out subtle insinuations here and there, beginning to doubt herself as being “not good enough” beginning to doubt if he ever truly loved her, “what if there is someone else?” Her neurosis drove him further away, he sensed something was amiss, but he never asked what it was, he knew exactly, and he didn’t have the answer to “and then what?”


…She sat in the widow seat, face pinned to the double glazed glass staring at the memories she was about to leave behind. This was it, the finale. She didn’t even notice the in-flight safety video playing in the background, all she could see were the tears cascading down her face and collecting onto her new scarf, all she could hear was his voice babying her. She picked up her phone, and dialed his number, she wanted him to hear her pain through the muted conversation of sobs and jet engine roars. The tears wouldn’t stop and nor would this feeling of helplessness.


…The moment she realized she was able to breathe without him, was the moment she realized she was over him. His cries for attention, his sweet words and sweeter actions were nothing but a passing fancy, nothing to ever satiate the once broken heart he left her with.