I was more than a girl in a song. He made me into “the girl who broke his heart.” Just a woman without a name, with no story beyond the one he gave to me in those few short paragraphs. He barely mentioned me. And I became a footnote. A song to stream. The girl with no face or background.
And hadn’t I wanted that? To be the muse? To be revered or hated, as long as I was something? I used to stream that song on repeat, read that article again and again, and sob hysterically. But now, as a woman in my thirties, I can see how little I asked for – and how much more I wanted. I’m not saying I deserved it, after what happened between us, after I broke his heart and shrieked in surprise as it shattered. As if it hadn’t been in my own hands. As if I wasn’t the one who dropped it, and then ran back to my first love with the fierce light of adoration in my heart. That light blinded me to everything and everyone but Rainer.
So no, maybe I didn’t deserve more than a few sentences back then.
Or maybe I did. Do we all deserve third (not second) chances (or fourth or fifth…hell, even sixth)?
This is my chance to write my side of the story, I guess. To become more than the “girl who broke his heart” or “his first love.”
Because the truth is, when I met him?
I was a ghost.
My heart felt like it was splitting out of my ribcage to ooze all over the cement. I couldn’t stop crying. I didn’t know how to be myself without him, didn’t know how to breathe or think or eat. So I smoked the cigarettes he hated and I got my friend Sam to buy me bottles of alcohol which I hid in the clubhouse. The clubhouse still stank of stale smirnoff that was still slightly splattered over the walls, and the fresh paint I’d used to cover the strange murals and words we’d painted it with a few year before. This place had once been my refuge, the place I’d once curled up with my friends and watched horror movies. Once upon a time I’d giggled with Delia over made up stories of the boys we’d thought we loved, with all of our young hearts. That was before we knew what love was and how much it hurt. It wasn’t a storybook fairytale, because it fucking hurt.
Sometimes I wondered if I’d die from the pain. And maybe that would be the better thing. Then this pain would end. How – how did anyone stop this? How did anyone recover from this? Especially when I was the one who’d done it? I’d crushed this between us, because I was selfish; because I wanted more, more, more. Why hadn’t he been enough? Why had I needed more than him, or thought I did? Was it just because we were young and I was afraid? Or was it something else?
Was there something broken in me?
I felt like a vase with a bullethole, just leaking out water and petals; no matter how many time I was filled with water and loveliness, eventually it just leaked out. No matter how often they tried, how many times he tried, I just kept becoming empty. He tried to – god, he tried. And I thought he could. I thought he would. But he couldn’t.
And now that little hole had become a fracture, that fracture had become more fractures, and I was seconds away from splintering into wet, blue painted glass. I didn’t blame him. But I did, at the same time. I wanted him to love me even though I wasn’t anything but this heart-spilling-mess. Even though I’d taken a hammer to him, and broken him as well. He had those green eyes, because of me. And what else? Was that the only thing I’d ever be? The girl who gave him green eyes and inspired a few poems? The broken doll? Was that all I’d ever be?
So what was a 17 year old, broken-hearted stupid girl to do but… distract herself? With alcohol. With weed. With the food I pushed around on my plate and barely touched. With the bones I saw through my skin. With the cigarettes I smoked down until the filter burned my teeth.
I took any distraction that came to me.
A bar where I could scrub the X’s off my hands and order a pitcher of margaritas? Perfect. A friend who whispered in my other friend Minnie’s ear about how he wanted me? Perfect. A party with a keg? Perfect. My stomach growling felt like an accomplishment, even when I got dizzy from hunger. I wanted it. All of it. I wanted to forget what I’d done.
When Leif started commenting on my MySpace I almost spit out my drink laughing. He was the star of Delia’s preteen fantasies. We had obsessed over his band together, though I’d been more into the lead guitarist than Leif. Delia had sighed over him in high school and I’d sat in the clubhouse with her and told her epic love stories about the two of them, my metal mouth clicking, my face sprouting zits, hair in strange places. We used to look at the ceiling and imagine the days when we’d be lovely, when we’d be seen, when these men would want us.
So it felt like some sort of weird, twisted prophecy when Leif began to instant message me on AIM. I felt guilty. This was the man Delia had once adored and he was messaging me? But at the same time, I was hungry. Hungry for the damn distraction. Hungry for every time that IM popped up with a little beep. Hungry for the way his words pushed Rainer away, just for a second.
23 hours of the day I was sitting in a haze of smoke and alcohol, the daze of schoolwork and missing friends, and the ache of losing my first love. And so I stole that hour. I let myself smile just a little bit, in between bouts of crying and shaking with rage. Leif opened a door within me; a sliver of possibility that I knew – I knew – I shouldn’t take.
But I was never good at denying myself anything; at least not then.
Not unless the thing I was denying myself was food.
Elisabeth Writing 