I haven’t been able to stomach a Subway sandwich in years—ten to be exact. I used to frequent the one on Olympic and Barrington with my first boyfriend. He’d get a five dollar footlong and I’d get a six inch with flat bread because I knew all those years ago that I had a gluten allergy. Somehow I felt it was an okay compromise to get the menu item with slightly thinner bread.
Sam and I dated for 3 years. We were the kind of couple that left my prom early and talked about marriage as we went back to his mom’s house. Despite our dedication, I knew that I couldn’t be with him forever, he was a devout atheist and my entire life is governed by exploring some form of divine connection. Back then I’d never touched alcohol or drugs—only couple years prior my mom had clawed her way out of opioid dependency and the sight of pills made me nauseous—and he was a pretty dedicated raver, experimenting with substances in the casual way that most high schoolers do. He loved McDonalds and video games, I was raised with vegetarian tendencies and I used my computer solely as an instrument for homework and Tumblr. He lied as a hobby, I was/am a big fan of honesty.
Half of our time together was long distance. I’d take the train every other weekend to see him and avoid his roommates. Looking back, I don’t think I was a very fun girlfriend. I did a lot of silent crying while staring out the car window. There wasn’t much I could do to explain it: I had almost lost my mother and now she was re-entering life as a middle aged woman with amnesia. Her memory gaps engulfed my childhood and I was practically a stranger to her, and vice versa. During the stage of life when traditionally kids rebel and find independence, I was supposed to get to know a mother who I’d only seen under a cloud of heavy medication. This lifetime of weird family shit was all very close to the surface. When Sam would ask me what was wrong, I’d say I was tired.
Maybe Sam liked me because of this emo backstory. Being moody complimented his hipster vibe. Perhaps it was more unique to eschew the manic and instead have an uptight pixie dream girl. I’d crochet at parties. He’d take pictures of me looking way too sad in floral dresses. This all began to crumble during my Senior year, when he called me during 2nd period to abruptly break up. I took my phone down to the dressing room under the theatre and listened to a litany of pretty good reasons why we weren’t meant to be. Sam didn’t sound like himself, but I guessed that was how people sounded when they fell out of love. We broke up for a week, during which I discovered how quickly I could erase someone from my memory. It was almost spooky, I called it the eternal sunshine effect. When we got back together, something had shifted irreparably. I could no longer see him with the same blind devotion.
So of course, I stayed with him for another six months. Nearing graduation, I could only take so much upheaval. Then I got a job at American Apparel and as much as it pains me to say retail changed my life: nothing was ever the same. I fell head over heels for the assistant manager, a self-proclaimed anarchist with round wire rim glasses and floppy straight hair. He’d stare at me from across the store—or at least I think he was looking at me, his lenses didn’t have anti-reflective coating so all I could see was white slashes of store lights. I wanted so badly to fall into his arms and while he read me Fitzgerald, but there was the inconvenient matter of Sam.
A couple months of sales floor pining went by until I decided it was time to break off my long distance relationship. It all went down one night after we picked up our usual order from Subway. We sat on his mom’s couch with How I Met Your Mother all cued up, the same as ever. Only this time I couldn’t stomach the veggie on flatbread.
I’d never broken up with anyone before, not even a casual situation. I stumbled through a basic yet straightforward pitch on parting ways. After a fair amount of comforting, crying and accepting, we got in his car—at that point I still didn’t drive. Rush hour had passed and the streets were clear, but the road seemed to stretch out for eternity. The concept of cheating was raised, Sam was suspicious that I had feelings for someone at work. It was here that I could honestly say that I had been faithful, but he didn’t believe me. I suggested that he’d known we were played out before I had, as he’d broken up with me just six months prior. He countered by revealing that fateful call had take n place after a long night on uppers and no sleep. This was supposed to be a good excuse, but it just cemented my resolve.
We got caught at a red light and while waiting for an empty intersection, Sam’s sadness morphed to anger. His voice dropped into a darker register as if to camouflage with the night. Gripping the steering wheel he proclaimed: you’ll never find anyone who treats you as good as I do. The words clanged against the car windows, until white noise filled my ears. It seemed too cliche to be hurtful and but the effect was chilling. As the chasm between us expanded, I grew mad but I didn’t refute his words. Part of me wanted to let him have that cheap satisfaction, because I was in the heartbreaker role.
Thankfully, that night has faded into the way back of my memory bank. Despite our obvious incompatibilities, I am happy for the time spent with Sam. High school relationships are meant to be a combination of joy rides and crash tests. I got to discover a sense of love and hints of what I wanted for the future. I got to shiver with anticipation as I rode the Amtrak to him on Fridays and cry beautiful tears on Sundays when the train pulled away from the platform. Nicholas Sparks wishes.
But this whole looking back fondly thing took time. For years, I thought of Sam’s spiteful decree and wondered if he was right. In my low moments, I’d remember his words like a powerful curse. Would I ever find anyone to love again? The assistant manager was two timing me and left in the middle of a shift with another girl. There was the guy who came inside me and didn’t think to tell me. There was the tinder date who choked me right after we started kissing. Or the drawn out unrequited romance, which was just me chasing a guy from garage rock show to dive bar show in the hopes that he’d notice me with a PBR in hand.
The list goes on, until there’s a gap in my resume where I just stopped looking. That break was the best decision I made during that era. I had to reassess what I was looking for and be ready to feel all the vulnerability that comes with falling in love. Spoiler alert: you can never fully prepare for that.
Most of all, I had to start my own story, not the one that Sam spit out during a dark ride home or the nightmarish one told again and again during my childhood. Everyone weaves a tale with their words, we get to decide whether or not we pick up the thread and loop it into our picture.
When I feel out of it, I have to ask myself if I’ve slipped into believing someone else’s story.
Am I buying the point system of the gamified internet? Do I want to feel this way? Words carry weight. What am I choosing to tow along, or do I set something down and tell a better story?
All of this starts and ends with this question: what does the silent inner world have to say? The place where acceptance and presence flow together into a wordless dance, carving at the cliffs surrounding our self-imposed limitations.
The more I can surrender to that realm, I embrace the sandstone erosion, the driving flash floods and persistent current within. The sharpest words are carried away if I loosen my grip, their edges by smoothed the water’s neutralizing caress. In this expanse, I can move from feeling. When the center of my being comes into focus, there isn’t much to talk about. But everything is right here.