every place he ruined for me

It had been seven months since Ethan had broken up with me. And just to be completely frank, things had not been good. It was October now, and I found myself curled up in a ball on the floor with a nearly empty box of tissues by my side and the sounds of Lana Del Rey blasting from my bluetooth speaker. I hadn’t been outside for eight days. I’d had my groceries delivered, I stopped going to pilates, I skipped every girls’ night we’d had planned. Whatever hit me had taken over my body. Like a virus. Like a heavy dose of some kind of sedative. I couldn’t move. I could barely breathe. And all over Ethan. That slimy, freckled, nail biter who had the gall once to suggest that I switch to dandruff shampoo – even though it wasn’t even dandruff, just some dried hair product that had gotten loose and made its way to my sweater.

What was it with these tiny, insignificant men and their effects on ambitious, successful women? Why was I the one knocked on my ass when Ethan got to spend his Saturday nights out at dive bars and gastropubs flirting with the next available twenty-something? It wasn’t fair. And why had I made myself sick over the whole thing? Nauseous at times even? Over a boy. He wasn’t even a man yet – he might never be. But it made me feel worse to think that I had gotten my heart broken by a juvenile nobody. What did that say about me? Why had I given him five years of my life? In the end I was the one who got mud all over my face, not the other way around. Adding insult to injury.

It seemed that my state of unrest had not gone unnoticed, because around seven, I heard a buzz at my door. I almost didn’t get up. I had hoped whoever it was would get the hint and just go away. But then I heard the sound of keys in the lock and the creak of the door opening.

“It’s me,” I heard calling from the hallway. “I hope you’re not dead.”

Linda had been my best friend since freshman year. We lived on the same floor and we both shared a hatred for girl pop music. We became fast friends and quickly found more things in common (sour candy strips, bad puns, and replaying videos of Oscar nominees who didn’t win, to name just a few). And when we graduated, we both moved to the city together. We even shared a small two-bedroom in Bushwick the first three years, until I moved in with Ethan and she moved in with her girlfriend Carly. And now I lived alone in the apartment that Ethan and I shared, and I was gonna have to give it up at the end of the lease, because I couldn’t afford to cover the rent without him.

She walked into the living room and stood over me. “Enough,” she said.

“Leave me to die,” I said back.

She squatted down beside me. “You’ve had your fun. Now, it’s time to get on with it.”

“With what?”

“You life.” She picked me up off the ground.

“Who says I want to be alive anymore?”

“Stop being dramatic. You need to get out of this apartment.” But I couldn’t leave the apartment. Everywhere I went reminded me of him. The bodega. The park. The vintage store where we bought matching overalls. The memories were too raw. Every place burned in my chest like having a hundred cigarettes put out in your skin. I hated it. I hated him. I hated the world for making me go through this alone.

“Come on. You can’t let him win like this.”

She was right. He was winning. And I was losing. I had succumbed to the worst trope imaginable: a sad dumped girl who couldn’t get over a guy.

“I hate seeing you like this. You’re better than this.” She looked at me like I was some kind of helpless animal. When people said things like that to you, they meant it to make you feel better. But it only made you feel worse. To think that you weren’t even rising to your own aptitude. That you had been weaker than others had once assumed.

“I try to go out,” I told her. “I try to go and then I remember. That’s where Ethan and I ate pancakes. And that’s where Ethan told me that joke about the fisherman. And that’s where Ethan got the runs. He’s ruined every place for me. I literally have nowhere anymore.”

“It’s a big city. You have so many places.”

“I literally have nowhere.” I rolled back over on the floor, wanting to sink into the floorboards. For the building to consume me whole.

“I love you. You know that. So I’m gonna be honest with you. I don’t think you even want to move on.”

I jumped up out of the fetal position. “What? What do you mean? Of course, I want to move on. It’s all I want. Actually, how dare you?” I surprised myself by the force with which I stated it. And that’s when she called my bluff. She stood up and walked over to my desk and pulled out a notepad and pen and handed them to me.

“What do you want me to do with those? Write a poem? A suicide note?”

“No,” she said. “Write down every place he ruined for you.”

“Why?”

“Because you and me, we’re gonna go back to all of them and we’re gonna break your brain out of your rut.”

“How are we gonna do that?”

“We’re gonna make a new memory in each of those places. Replace the old ones. Overwrite them.”

“That’s not gonna work.” I’d always remember Ethan. Those funny moments. Those sweet looks. They would always overpower any other memory.

“We’ll get creative. We’ll have to do some wild stuff. But by the time we get through this list, you’re gonna be able to go back to all the places you used to love.”

I moaned. “It sounds like so much work.” I lay back down on the floor.

But she wouldn’t stand for it. She pulled me up. “If you want to get better, you know what you have to do.” I wanted to protest, but I also wanted for her to leave. So I took the pen and started writing down every place I could think of. And in the end I had seventeen places which reminded me of Ethan. Seventeen places I couldn’t stand to think about going to without him. Every place he ruined for me.

She took the list and folded it. “Meet me downstairs at eight tomorrow morning.” Then, she got up and left.

“Eight? But that’s so early!” But all I heard was the door shutting through the hallway.

the day i first saw him

Ethan and I had met on a winter day two years after I had moved to the city. I was working as an account manager at an advertising agency (a job I hated with every fiber of my being) and he had just started as a graphic designer (possibly the coolest white collar profession). All the graphic designers sat across the floor from the account managers. I remember exactly what he was wearing: a button down plaid shirt, dark chinos, and a braided belt. He looked like he had stepped out of a Lands End catalog. My knees almost buckled at the sight of him. I knew it when I saw him – he looked the part, the part of my boyfriend. He was all the things I wanted. And I know what you’re thinking – how could you know a person had all the things you wanted by just looking at them. But let me tell – sometimes, you just can. 

one. our regular coffee spot

I met Linda down in the lobby of my building. Could you even call it a lobby? It was really just a receptacle for junk mail and unclaimed Amazon packages. Maybe it was good I was being forced out of this place. If I were another (read: stronger) person, I would’ve done what most respectable women did when they found themselves unable to afford rent alone – I would’ve found the next available and willing man to move in with me. But I was still too deep into the mess of Ethan that I hadn’t even begun to see other men. It’s like they were all invisible. They’d pass me in the street and I wouldn’t even take a second look – even the really attractive ones.

“Good, you’re up and you’re sort of dressed,” Linda said. It was true. I hadn’t exactly been putting my best foot forward lately. But I worked from home now. I barely saw anyone in real life. I could mask both my dry skin and my depression in the humble square of a Zoom meeting. It’s wild how much a mental breakdown could be hidden on a video conference. “We’re getting coffee,” Linda finally said.

We walked the four blocks to the coffee shop Ethan and I went to on the regular. It was one of those quaint little spots with a cutesy name – Early Bird – and it served passable coffee and overpriced croissants. But it didn’t matter how average it was – it was our spot. I knew his drink order. We had our own table by the window. Or if that wasn’t available, we had our spot at the bar counter. Some weekend mornings, we’d just sit there, and Ethan would grab a hard copy of the New York Times and flip to the arts section and I would scroll on my phone, and we’d just sit side by side, saying nothing, because that’s how real couples existed. They existed in parallel with their partners. They didn’t need to perform the act of being together.

“Shut up,” Linda said. “Enough with the romanticizing.” The god’s honest truth – I needed the walk. I hadn’t exercised in weeks. I’d barely moved from my couch. And four blocks winded me. Or was it the heartbreak that had winded me? Regardless, the octogenarians on my block had a higher lung capacity than I did. We stood outside the door and I hesitated. I hadn’t been back since Ethan and I broke up. It felt too raw. All the memories came flooding back in. Like a supercut of the best moments of our relationship. All the coffees, all the laughs, every kiss.

“I can’t go in there,” I said.

“Yes, you can.”

“No, I can’t. It’s too hard. He’s all over the place. He’s everywhere.”

“This’ll be good for you. We’ll do this one place at a time.”

“No matter what I do, I'll still be reminded of him. I know it’s pathetic, but I can’t get him out of my head. Everywhere I look, I think about him. About his stupid face. About his dumb hair. He didn’t even give me a good reason for breaking up with me. He just said he didn’t see us together anymore. Like what is that?”

“You’re not gonna get closure from him,” Linda said. “You have to give it to yourself.” She looked inside the window. “You have to replace every memory with a bigger one. Something wild. Something unforgettable.”

“Like what?” She took my hand and she pulled me inside. I hadn’t stepped foot in the Early Bird since we had broken up. I even avoided it any time I had to go out – I’d go four blocks out of the way not to have to see it.

Linda walked up to the counter and pulled the barista in for a quick chat. I could see her pointing toward me and I could tell she was giving him the whole miserable backstory, because he kept glancing over in my direction with a look of pity on his face. I saw him register the end of the story, then he looked back over to me, then to Linda again and nodded. He quickly went into the back room and returned, sliding something over to her across the counter.

When Linda returned, I asked her what had happened. “We’re making a new memory here. Like I said.” She produced two small cups of some liquid. “It’s pickle juice.”

“Pickle juice?”

“Spicy pickle juice. They had it in the back. They serve sandwiches here. I guess these are their specialties. We’re taking them. Together.”

“Gross, no way.”

“That’s the point. I want you to look around and remember this place. Then drink the pickle juice.”

“It’s too early.”

“I’m doing it with you. Right now.”

Linda raised the pickle juice to the barista at the bar, who smiled over to us. The other barista was beside him now and clearly in on the gag. We had an audience.

“Cheers,” Linda said as she turned back to me. I raised the shot of pickle juice and threw it back in my mouth. It was spicy and sour and disgusting in all the best ways. For a second all I could feel was my throat burning and the sensation of wanting to throw up. But I had to hand it to Linda, I wasn’t thinking of Ethan at that moment.

“That was disgusting,” I said. “I hate you.”

“You’re welcome,” Linda glared at me.

The barista came over with two coffees for us. “On the house,” he said, handing them to us. “You look like you need a chaser.” He smiled and walked back behind the counter, as if he was in on the joke, which I guess he was. I took a sip of the coffee, which was actually much better than I had remembered it – I had just gotten so used to drinking shitty instant coffee the last few months. But when you drink shitty coffee every day, you forget it’s shitty.

As we left the Early Bird, Linda pulled out the list of places Ethan had ruined for me and crossed it off at the top of the list. Then she neatly folded it and put it back inside her bag. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“It’s still early. We can get through at least a few more today.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me down the street.

that first happy hour

Even though Ethan was sort of floppy and unmemorable and he pretty much always wore chinos and a button down, there was something about him that I just couldn’t shake. I don’t know what it was. The first few weeks, we barely spoke. I’d watch him from a distance, imagining what he must be like, what kind of qualities he had, how big his family was, what he studied in college. But it wasn’t until we all went to happy hour one day after work that we had our first real conversation. I was standing alone at the bar waiting for a drink when he came up to me. “We haven’t met. Not officially. My name’s Ethan.” He did the very proper thing where he reached out his hand and we shook. Only I could tell he wasn’t interested in a hand shake.

I told him I liked his shirt. He said he got it at J.Crew. And I told him that I basically only wore Madewell anymore, but that pretty much all clothing now was fast fashion, even the higher end brands, so why were we paying premiums for these labels anymore. He didn’t seem to understand, because Ethan had gone from getting his entire wardrobe gifted to him by his mother to buying the exact same pieces his mother had bought him, only in variable colors and patterns. That was the kind of guy Ethan was – sensible, pragmatic, bound to routine. And that’s what was so endearing about him. He didn’t seem to get fixated on the things we all spent too much of our time and mental bandwidth on. He used that space for other things, or nothing at all. Which I thought was admirable.

two. where we bought books

We approached Punctuation, the independent book store Ethan and I used to frequent. On top of having the best window displays, the store had two cats that roamed the aisles. We’d each buy a book, read them, and trade. And there weren’t a lot guys who read – especially fiction – but Ethan loved fiction, and not just sci-fi or fantasy. He’d read literary fiction, historical fiction, romance. His breadth of taste was wide and deep. He had really good taste too. Everything he picked I ended up liking more than whatever I chose. It really bothered me and I always felt embarrassed that he had to slog through whatever thing I had decided on.

Linda told me to shut up and stop talking about Ethan. “You gotta take him off the pedestal,” she said.

“He’s better than me. It’s why he left.”

“He is not better than you. Not by a mile. You just can’t see it right now.”

Linda beelined it for the register again, and I could already see she was giving the woman the rundown on what had happened, how pathetic and sad I was about the break up, and this quest we were on. And it occurred to me that pretty soon all of Brooklyn would know that I had been unceremoniously dumped and that I was a sad pathetic, single loser now. The woman at the register nodded, and Linda waved me over. We walked toward the back room which had no windows and only a series of small cubbies for the employees to put their personal items in.

“So now what?” I asked.

Linda pointed down to a litter box in the corner. Then the woman from the bookstore handed me a spatula. “Go for it,” she said.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“I told her you would clean it out for them.”

The litter box was disgusting. Two cats using one box – it was not enough. Linda just stood by while I shoveled dry shit and piss out of the box and dumped it into a plastic bag. When she was finally satisfied, the woman opened a door to the alleyway. “Dumpster’s back here.”

“This is not what I had in mind,” I said.

“When you’re holding a bag of shit, you by definition can’t be thinking about Ethan.”

“Can’t we make fun memories?” I said. 

She patted me on the back and lifted the lid to the dumpster. “Let’s get lunch.”

three. soyrizo omelettes and sourdough toast

We sat at a booth in the corner. Specifically the corner because that was mine and Ethan’s booth. Linda knew it too. The diner was our go-to spot. Not for lunch, but for off hours. For times when we got hungry but nowhere else was open or we just wanted to sit and share a plate. It did what diners did best, omelettes and french toast, coffee that was passable at best, and the feeling that time didn’t expire as long as you stayed here. 

We had come here enough that the waitresses recognized us by face. “Where’s the other half,” our server Diane asked.

Linda pulled the bandaid off immediately, “Diane, that’s no longer happening.”

“Right,” she said. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“Two waters, two coffees,” Linda said.

Diane nodded and went back behind the counter.

“This is awful,” I said. “That’s exactly why I avoid these places.”

“The problem is you build it up too much. You make it bigger than it really is. It’s out of the way now.”

“No, it’s not,” I said. “It’s right there. It’s staring me right in the face.”

It didn’t matter how much I tried to stop thinking about Ethan, he always re-entered my mind. LIke some kind of debilitating, brain virus you contract from swimming in parasite-infested waters in the Amazon. That was what Ethan was – a parasitic disease that prevented your brain from functioning properly. It made you think about him and talk about him all the time.

“I never liked him,” Linda said.

“You’re just saying that now.”

“No, I’m not. He wasn’t good. He was boring. Not just boring, because boring is forgivable. He was limiting. He limited you. He kept you down. He was a bad fit for you. You made yourself small around him.”

“No, I didn’t,” I said.

“Yes, you did, hun.”

Diane brought over the waters and coffees. “There you go, sweetheart.” She said it with pity. That was the look I was avoiding. When strangers sensed that you were not all right. That you were fragile. That you might never recover from this thing that happened to you. “And just so you know, hun. I’ve been divorced three times. And let me tell you – there’s always another guy out there and he’s probably just as bad.”

We had eaten at the diner so many times I had lost track. And now I couldn’t even enjoy the coffee without thinking about him.

“Real talk,” Linda said. “You haven’t been yourself in a long time.” What did she mean by that? I had never not been myself. I was nothing but myself. I was so myself that Ethan left me. “You became someone else every day you were with Ethan.”

“That’s not true,” I said.

“It is true. Every day I saw you become a version of yourself you thought Ethan wanted. I saw you censor yourself. I saw you placate him. I saw you give up the things you always loved so much.”

“Like what?”

“Like silly dance parties. And board games. And campy musicals. Even the books you started picking up. They were always what you thought Ethan would like.” She had a point. As much as I wanted to believe I had stayed firm in myself, I had always worried that if I didn’t fit what Ethan wanted, he would leave me. But in the end, even when I made myself into exactly what I thought he wanted, he still left. “I’m not saying to be mean. Or to kick you while you’re down. I’m saying this because I want you to see. I want you to look back and really see it for what it was. Sometimes we get so fixated on pushing a round peg through a square hole, so we keep forcing it. And for a while we get it part way through, but eventually it just gets stuck.”

It’s like she had the whole metaphor prepared. And I didn’t like what she was saying. I mean, she didn’t get it. I only came to her when things were bad. I only complained to her about Ethan. She had only ever gotten a one-sided view of him. She didn’t see him when we were alone together. How would she even know? She didn’t see Ethan the way I saw him. She only saw the slumpy version that I made him out to be.

“I know what you’re thinking, that he was way better in private. That there were all these sweet things that he did when it was just the two of you.” That bitch. She was getting my head. “But the truth is I saw the things you couldn’t see. The way he treated you. The way he dismissed you. The excuses you found yourself making for him.”

I stared down at the table. I knew I couldn’t get defensive. It wouldn't help my case.

“I just think, we see people the way we want to see them. Not how they actually are. But look, we’re getting through it.” She pulled out the sheet and scratched out the bookstore from it. Two down. Fifteen more to go. Including this very diner, which still reminded me of him.

Linda stared at the name, Giorgio’s Diner. She folded the paper again and looked up across the room. And then she stood up and walked across the room to the counter, where a man – maybe about seventy or eighty – was eating by himself. She took a seat next to him and started chatting. I had to hand it to Linda, she was fearless. She took control of situations. She stood up for other people. She lived her life without the kind of fear I had. And she wasn’t afraid to be alone the way I was.

After she spoke with the man, I saw the two of them head over to the table. Linda motioned for the man to enter the booth. He sat across from me. “This is John,” Linda said. I looked at Linda. What the hell was this about? “I thought John might be able to give you some context on life.”

“Why? Because he’s old?” I immediately caught myself. “I’m sorry. That was so rude of me.”

“I’m not offended,” John said. “I am fucking old.” I laughed. A kind of reflexive laugh I couldn’t control. And I realized I hadn’t laughed in a long time. And then I started to tear up. I didn’t know why. It felt like a release. “I hear you’re going through it.”

I nodded. “I’m really going through it.”

“That’s good. That’s the only way.”

“Where are you from, John?” I asked.

“Around the block. Grew up here. Met my wife here. Had my kids here. It’s the greatest city in the world. No question.”

“It is,” I said. There was no argument against it.

The thing about older people was they had less time left than the rest of us, but it seemed they had all the time in the world. There was a kind of slowness that came with age. A new pace you found when you had been through life, really been through it. John told me about his childhood, about meeting his wife, about having a family, about his career, about his friends, about all the years he had lived. And in contrast my world began to feel so small. And if not small, it felt unlived. At least yet.

We sat there for an hour and not once did he even look at the clock or attempt to end the conversation and glance at the door. John had given us his undivided attention. And these days our attentions had been divided all the time. That’s what it always felt like with Ethan. Something I could never quite express. Like only half of him or less was ever there. Some part of him was always somewhere else or wanting to be somewhere else. And I was always the one trying to pull him back, to keep him here.  

Linda got up and went to the bathroom. And John and I sat there alone for the first time. “The secret,” he said, leaning into me, “is to be extremely judicious about the people you spend the most time with. Because the people you spend time with are a reflection of you. And you’re a reflection of them. And so you get to see who you are by looking at them. And they get to do the same. So choose wisely.”

He was right. Had I even been discerning when I picked Ethan? Or had he just been around? And had I just been scared of being lonely?

“But I have good news for you.”

“What’s that?”

“You have a good friend. Someone who will walk over to a stranger and ask him to come over and meet you. Even at the risk of looking a little silly or getting turned down.”

“That’s how she is,” I said.

“And so are you.”

in retrospect

I should’ve seen it coming. Ethan had been applying for jobs for months. And it never occurred to me that he might be out there looking for positions not because he had plateaued at work or because he wanted a higher salary, as he had said, but because he wanted to get away from me. Because he was preparing for the moment when he could end things officially and not have to see me every day in the office. When the day came that he accepted a job offer, I hadn’t considered that he might be planning a life that didn’t include me. That, actually, he had been hoping to begin building a new life, one where I no longer occupied any space, by excising the parts of his current life where I still got in his way.

And it was a spineless move, to be frank. He switched gyms. He stopped showing up to weekly trivia. And he started dropping subtle hints. Like talking about moving apartments and doing his laundry separately again and cooking meals for just himself. Micro-actions that without any context didn’t seem unusual until you put them all together and they started to reveal themselves as part of a master plan. I should’ve seen it coming. It made me feel stupid. Foolish. Blind. I looked like the naive, unsuspecting girlfriend and he the grandmaster. And I hated feeling that way. I was the one who kept everything together in our relationship. I planned everything. I cleaned up after him. 

After we officially broke up and he moved apartments, he forwarded any mail to his new place in Gowanus. The only thing that still came was a subscription we shared to the New Yorker. But he never even read the magazine. He just liked to keep them out on the coffee table so that when guests would come over, they’d think he was smart enough to get through the articles. So out of spite, I read them cover to cover. Every week. Without fail. Because I wasn’t going to let him win. If I was going to be single, I was at least going to be cultured.

the places we went

Linda spent the next two weeks dragging me around the city from place to place. She was as determined as anyone I had ever met. And when she put her mind to something, there was never anything that could stop her. And it was no different with my break up. She got it in her head that this would make me feel better, and I had learned long ago that protesting did nothing, resisting only encouraged more force, and that the best tactic was to succumb to her will. Linda’s obstinance had gotten us in trouble more than once before.

four. a bridge to nowhere

Ethan and I had walked across the Brooklyn Bridge about a month into dating. It’s where he told me he hated musicals. All musicals. Even movie musicals. The Sound of Music. Singin’ in the Rain. The Wizard of Oz. It was offensive. Linda and I set up a makeshift karaoke microphone, and we sang Barbara Streisand’s rendition of “Don’t Rain on My Parade” from Funny Girl. We received a tepid applause from a few Australian  tourists and a dad with his two kids.

five. our favorite deli

We always had our go-to orders. But since Ethan and I broke up, I hadn’t had my favorite sandwich – a pastrami on rye. The pastrami now tasted as salty as the tears I cried on the daily. Linda wouldn’t stand for it. She marched me into the deli and we put in two orders and waited by the counter, but not pastrami. We ordered two mystery sandwiches that the owners could select or build themselves. We had to guess the ingredients.

six. duane reade

We scoured the candy aisles, but I got sad and started crying over a bag of sour worms. Linda asked the attendant if I could take a seat in one of those vaccination booths. So I ate gummy worms and cried for fifteen minutes there. Linda stood outside holding guard until I was ready to be done. She bought five more bags of sour worms just in case. 

seven. the dog park

Ethan and I never had a dog. We could never get one on account of his allergies and because he said dogs were too much work. But we’d always pass the dog park near the apartment and I used to think about the day Ethan might change his mind. Linda borrowed a coworker's dog for the afternoon and we took her to the park and played with her. 

eight. the guggenheim

Linda and I brought sketch notebooks and did portraits of each other in the lobby. My drawing made Linda look like a cross between Ramona Quimby and the Slender Man. Hers was actually really good. I couldn’t believe I never knew she was such an artist. We framed them and put them on our bedside tables. 

nine. the record shop

Ethan loved vinyl. We spent a lot of time looking through old records. But as far as I could tell, Ethan only liked the aesthetic of vinyl. The record shop had a sound proof booth where you could listen to records. Linda and I listened to three whole ABBA records in a row until the owner politely asked to wrap it up. 

ten. a dive bar

We frequented a bar near our place. The bartender recognized us and would sometimes throw in a few extra rounds if he was feeling generous. Linda said she’d meet me at the bar, but I arrived before her. I didn’t like being there alone. But I waited at the counter and the bartender – his name was Max, which I miraculously had remembered – came up and started talking to me. He said he remembered me, and asked why I hadn’t been back in so long. I told him it was because of Ethan, because of the break up. I told him about the list of places he ruined for me. And how Linda was helping me get through them one by one. 

And then he said something I hadn’t expected. He said he could always tell which couples were going to last. I asked him how. He said, “You always watch when one of them gets up to use the bathroom.”  

“That’s it?” I said.

“And then you wait. You wait and you see if the other one looks over their shoulder to check to see when they’re coming back. It means they can’t wait for them to get back.”

And then I asked him, “Do you remember the guy I was with?”

He nodded.

“And did he ever?”

He shook his head. “He’d always look at the door. Like he was waiting for the first chance to leave.” That made me feel like shit. “People like that, guys like him, they don’t know what they have. They just keep looking for a reason to leave. And so they find one. Eventually.” I could tell he meant what he said. Then, he poured two shots – one for me and one for himself. And we took them together. I hadn’t had a shot in years, but something about it brought me back to life. By the time Linda showed up, I had almost forgotten she was coming. 

eleven. the farmer’s market

We could never really afford the farmer’s market prices, but still went anyway. Ethan said he could taste the difference, but I don’t think he would’ve been able to tell in a blind taste test. Ethan liked the idea of things more than he liked the things themselves. Linda had a friend who worked at one of the booths selling candles, jewelry, and other decorative tchotchkes. She let us make our own matching bracelets together. Mine read, “You are strong.” And Linda’s read, “Ethan has a micropenis.”

twelve. our thai restaurant

Linda and her girlfriend Colleen took me out to eat at my favorite Thai restaurant. I hadn’t been back since the break up. The last time Ethan and I went it had been raining for several days straight, and I suggested coconut curry because coconut curry never failed to revive a rainy day. They ordered “authentic Thai” spice level and made me – a notoriously weak-willed eater – have the whole dish myself. I could barely get through the meal and had to order an extra bowl of rice just to keep from throwing up. But the burning sensation made me forget about Ethan for at least fifteen minutes.

the first time (since the last time)

We had made it through most of the list and I was finally feeling like my old self again. I was on my way to dinner with my cousin Amber, when the worst thing happened: I saw Ethan for the first time since he broke up with me. And it gets worse. He was sitting in a Mediterranean restaurant and he wasn’t alone. He was with a woman. A really pretty woman. A brunette with bangs. And a killer rack. I assume. I didn’t know what to do. I froze in the middle of the sidewalk and just stared. I could feel a wave of pain through my body, the kind you feel when you’re about to collapse from an out-of-control fever. It was awful. 

Falling in love felt like having every cell of your body lose half its weight, but getting your heart broken felt like all your cells had doubled in size but were still crammed inside of your same, withered frame, like you might explode at any moment. And seeing Ethan out to dinner with some other woman felt like all my cells were about to combust simultaneously and melt into each other and that I would become nothing more than a blob of floating goop. I couldn’t make it to dinner. I immediately turned around and went back home. I texted my cousin that I got diarrhea. Even that was less embarrassing than the truth.

the diner again

I wish I could say it had all worked out. Linda and I had crossed off twelve of the seventeen places on the list, but I wasn’t any closer to feeling better. I felt like the world had gotten smaller and smaller, like the walls were closing in on me faster and faster. And that pretty soon I would have nothing left. No hopes. No prospects. I would just be sad and alone. I went back to the diner by myself and ordered a stack of pancakes. When the waitress came over with my food, I heard a familiar voice. It was John. He asked if he could join me.

I think he could tell right away that I wasn’t doing well. Maybe it was the amount of maple syrup I poured over my pancakes or maybe it was the smudge mascara that I hadn’t bothered to clean from my face. John struck me as one of those men of few words. He seemed precise in his language. Purposeful. I figured no one could go that long in life and not come out with something useful to say. Halfway through my stack of pancakes, he asked me something I wouldn’t forget. “You’re a whole planet,” he said. “All by yourself. But you decided to make him your whole world.” I understood what he meant. I had made Ethan the center of my universe. Everything went back to Ethan. He had become a compulsion. He had become an obsession. He had become my everything. And it had to stop. John looked at me, reaching his hand over to mine: “Go back to your world and start exploring again. Make it as big as you are.”

new places

Linda was right, but there was more to it than just the places he ruined for me. I needed new places too. I needed to remind myself that the world – my world – was just as big without Ethan. What John said was right – I had made my world so small and made Ethan’s so big. I had limited myself. And I had cried myself to sleep for months over what? Over some idea of Ethan, of our life together, which was never exactly what I wanted. Ethan had never made me feel like the center of his world, so at least I could be the center of my own. 

I began going out to a new place every night. Somewhere I had never been before. Sometimes alone. Sometimes with friends. I saw a new musical. I ran a charity race. I flew to London on a whim. If I couldn’t make Ethan smaller, I could at least make the world bigger. 

my place

We got through the rest of the list surprisingly fast. And we only had a few left when I came across a sign for a one-bedroom for lease just a few blocks from where Linda and Colleen lived. It was a renovated garden apartment with a private patio on the back. And when I walked inside, it just felt like it was already mine. I had never had my own place. I had lived with roommates or with Ethan and I could imagine myself here. Alone. I imagined how I would decorate it, where we could play cards, where I might have a dog. I even imagined someone else moving in. Some space for a new person in my life. I had to fight a pair of recent college grads for it, but in the end I won out.

seventeen. the end of the list

Linda and I popped a bottle of champagne along the river at the bench where Ethan first kissed me. We drank the bottle and she crossed it off the list. “I have to admit,” Linda said. “Part of this whole thing was just a selfish ploy to get you back in my life.”

“What?” I asked.

“You were always so caught up with Ethan. Always doing whatever he wanted to do. I didn’t mind it. You were happy. And I was happy for you. But when you broke up, I realized how much I had missed you. All this time. Part of me wanted to do this so we could just spend some time together again.”

She was right. I had gotten caught up in Ethan. “I’m glad you did,” I said.

We were going in different directions. We hugged and said goodbye. I walked along the river as long as I could. I would have to pack up the apartment and be out by the end of the week. I crossed the street when I heard a familiar voice. I turned to see Max the bartender waving at me from the sidewalk. I had never seen him outside the bar. In the light of day, he was much more normal looking. He had groceries in hand and a bouquet of flowers sticking out of one bag.

I had been going back to the bar more regularly, but I was afraid now that I was moving apartments, it would be too out of the way to make it worthwhile. Max walked over to me. “Which way are you going?” I pointed in the direction of my apartment. “Do you want some company?” I nodded. We started walking and he never tried to walk ahead, the way Ethan always would. And somewhere between there and my apartment, I had the thought – Ethan was out there somewhere in the city probably. And he was probably doing something with someone else. And he probably wasn’t thinking about me at all. But it didn’t matter to me what he was doing or who he was doing it with. Because suddenly Ethan had gotten very, very small. And I could hardly spend any time thinking about him anymore, because my world had gotten just a bit more sizable. And when your world is big enough, you don’t have time to think about someone who didn’t want to be in it anymore.

It had now been over a year since Ethan had broken up with me, and just to be completely frank, things had actually been okay.