"The heart was made to be broken."
It’s a little after 2pm and I’ve just gotten off work. I pull the black exterior with black leather interior Mazda 3—the car Mike and I bought together just a few months ago in January—into the single parking space of our apartment. We live in a building with only 7 other apartments; our apartment is in the back on the bottom. Our parking space is right between our front door and the dumpster. As soon as I put the car in park, I can see that something is different. There’s a bag of trash carelessly strewn next to the dumpster which is unusual. I grab my purse and my work things and start walking to our front door. The screen door is ripped in the center and the door is partially unhinged. How long has this rip been here? This damn thing—it never did close right. Behind the screen door, the apartment door isn’t quite closed all the way. I push it open. Did I forget to close it this morning before I left?
And then I see. All at once, what has happened here becomes very apparent and tremendously devastating. My eyes well up with tears and my stomach flops over. The television is gone. The speakers are gone. The amp is gone. Mike’s computer desk and all of its contents plus his laptop are missing. There is debris on the floor. Our refrigerator is gone. A garbage bag full of the former contents of our freezer is sitting on my dining room table, creating a puddle and ruining the paint on the table. The food was bagged and left for dead what looks like several hours ago. I’m weeping. I sit on my couch for a moment, and take in what’s left. There’s a flokati rug still here, the now empty entertainment center left behind, my dining room table and chairs, my couch and my loveseat. The coat closet door is wide open and half its inhabitants are gone. There are coat hangers askew on the floor. I put my head between my knees and bellow. Suddenly, I remember there’s another room and I feel like I can’t breathe. Our bedroom. I don’t remember standing up and now it feels like I’m floating towards the back of our apartment. The bathroom looks largely untouched; just like in most relationships, most of the shit in the bathroom belongs to the girl. I turn to the right and see that the bedroom door has been reverently closed. You bastard. It feels like he did it on purpose, to make me have to open it myself. I stand in front of the door for what feels like 30 minutes but was probably only one before I turn the knob. I don’t enter the room, I just open and swing the door wide. I’m sobbing so loudly at this point that I lose control of whatever the fuck my vocal cords are doing and let out something that must’ve sounded like a scream. My neighbor will mention this sound to me later and I will say that I stubbed my toe while I was packing. Our bed is gone. His bed. He left behind the sheets I bought last month, in one giant disheveled pile in the middle of the floor, and the frame, dismantled and standing in pieces in the corner. He also took the nightstand that I bought for him when we first moved into this place. For a brief moment, anger relieves me from my hysteria. I wanted that nightstand. Of course, his half of the closet is empty and he took his dresser too. We had painted the bedroom a dark royal blue when we moved in. We left the trim and crown molding white and I had wrapped dried flowers around the top of the big window. They’re still hanging there, the only thing left on the walls. I’m struck by how beautiful this color is and I also realize that I’m going to have to paint it back to white. Other than the now lonely flowers and my clothes, this room is empty except for the smell of us and a trunk I bought when I first moved to Los Angeles.
Last night when I got home from work, I went to the kitchen to start heating up some leftover enchiladas. I wasn’t especially sad or angry; I don’t remember feeling anything in particular. I had no idea what was going to happen next. Mike came home and I heated a plate up for him too. We sat across from each other at the dining room table, not cattycorner like we usually do so that we can be closer. We were directly across from each other, like opponents. Like we were about to play Battleship. The silence between us made me start to cry. His fork dropped heavy to his plate and made a loud PUNG that rang out over my whimpering. I looked up at him and he was looking at me, sternly and sadly.
“Do you want to talk about it?” He asked me earnestly.
“I just.. I feel like.. I just.. “
“What? C’mon. COME ON. WHAT?” It was a mild threat, but it did the trick. Time to spit it out. It’s time to say something, anything.
“Things have been great between us in the last few months and I’m still not happy. I think that means something.” I blurt out at last.
He looked at me expectantly. That was all I had really wanted to say. Nothing else was planned. I did not know that last night was going to be the night I was going to finally say, “I can’t be with you anymore.”
“It’s over?” He confirms with a stoic stare and a very reserved tone of voice, considering.
“This has nothing to do with Travis. I swear. I don’t know why I’m not happy. I’d like to take some time and be with myself and figure it out.”
He patiently and quietly looked right at me with soft eyes and said, “I know. I know you better than you think.” His gentleness in that moment was heartbreaking. Where was this man when we were fighting a few months ago?
“I’ve never been alone. I really need that right now. I’m sorry. I love you. This has nothing to do with anything, I just.. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”
“There is really nothing left to explain. I had a feeling this was coming, I just didn’t realize it was going to be so soon. I’m going to my parents’ house right now. I don’t know when I’m coming back to get my things. We’ve already paid rent for April so you might as well take the next month and figure out what you’re going to do with yourself.”
And with that, he walked out the front door. He left the car behind. I can’t imagine what that hour-long bus ride to Culver City where his family lives was like. As for me, I wept on the couch and called Anna over to hold me while I sobbed. It all happened so fast. I was instantly upset but not convinced that it was real. We will talk about this more tomorrow, I thought. I didn’t really mean to break up with him, I thought. I slept on the couch because I didn’t want to smell his side of the bed. Anna slept on the loveseat. She was still there when I got up to go to work this morning, but I know she left shortly after me. If she had stayed a little longer, she would’ve seen Mike pulling up in a U-Haul with 4 or 5 of his closest friends, ransacking the house to move all of his belongings out as fast as possible. Like pulling a band-aid, Mike ripped everything out of our home and just like that, he became my ex-boyfriend.
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