It’s been almost three weeks since I had to break up with him. I have written countless articles for Teen Ink about everything from missing him and wanting him back, to being totally over him. It has felt so good to have an outlet. Last night I wrote an article that said that I was not going to write any more articles about him because I am over him now. Okay, so obviously I lied about the no more article thing. But I am over him, and it still feels so good.


What I was thinking about tonight was the full process of after break up-ness, in terms of my daily habits. When I first broke up with him I thought about him constantly, and missed him so much. I was so mad at him for cheating on me. I couldn’t read books that involved romance, in fact my reading during the early days after the break up included a book about the Holocaust (that was one of the books I was handed by my favorite librarian when I asked for good books to take my mind off of the break up). I listened to music that didn’t involve break ups or love, which is a very hard genre of music to find.


Then, things started to shift. The book on the Holocaust, as real and tragic as it is, started to get a little boring. It isn’t that I am insensitive, and don’t like books about sad things, in fact normally I love that type of book, but that I needed a book that had a happy ending. I needed a book like “Kisses and Lies.” As much as the title implies it’s a book about heartbreak, it isn’t. It’s a book about love, and friendship, and just basically good stuff…minus some not so happy plot points I won’t share, in favor of not spoiling the book. After reading that I can read anything I want to again, forget censoring love stories out. In this same time period I got incredibly tired of my playlist of non-love songs, and began listening to all my favorite music again, anything and everything on my iPod, instead of just those stupid 20 or so non-love songs.


Now when I think of him, it’s not in the sad way it was before. I don’t truly miss him. I think of him in that pondering way that a person thinks of something that is baffling them. In that way that is like thinking of a riddle. I think about the things he said in the last couple weeks he was supposedly my boyfriend. I re-think how I interoperated things he said. I wonder if he meant things a different way than I thought.

An example: I would ask him what he was doing and he would say he was thinking of me. At the time, I thought it was sweet, now I’m wondering if that was just his way of not telling me much. Or if he was really thinking of me, then maybe he was thinking of ways to break up with me. That’s just one example; there are a zillion other things I have been over-assessing in my head. You see, the things I think of now, are just curiosity. I don’t think of him because I haven’t moved on, but because I want to know the signs that a guy is possibly cheating, so that when I date some other guy and these signs show up, I’ll see trouble a mile away.