Broken Little Birds

We never needed fixing

“I keep telling him that he goes for the broken little birds,” his mom said to me as I held the phone to my wet cheek. “He needs to work on himself before he tries to fix someone else.”

It had been probably a month since the break up. I forced myself daily to hold back tears, manage to put clean clothes and make up on, and go outside. I struggled with keeping it together, but I had people telling me I looked better than I ever had. After shedding 20 pounds over the course of winter break, I should have expected those remarks.

Most people knew what I was going through, but they didn’t realize I wasn’t running laps in a gym or watching what I ate. I would assume they thought I wanted to look my best to win him back, which wasn’t the case. I was stuck on the couch or in bed, crying and unable to eat for over two weeks.

On January 2, 2013, I returned a phone call from the night before. It was around 10 a.m. and I had to work later. I was holding the phone between my head and shoulder and searching for a necklace I’d received from my boyfriend.

“Maybe I left it at school,” I thought. I continued looking through different bags and boxes for the little silver cat necklace.

Then, he answered.

“When are you off from work?” he asked.

I knew something was wrong.

“You know that never happens,” I responded.

“Well, I want to come to New York. I need to talk to you.”

“Just do it. Whatever it is, I won’t be able to handle waiting for it. I might barf.”

He fought and insisted on telling me in person. Finally, he said it.

“I just don’t love you. I haven’t for a year. I love you as a person, but I’m not in love with you.”

I wanted a real answer, but he said he didn’t have one. I offered solutions like starting from scratch and re-learning about one another once winter break ended, but he denied. I asked if there was someone else or if he was gay. He denied both, but I had a feeling that he was lying about one.

I called him for two weeks, begging for an answer. I just wanted to know the truth. Had he cheated? What was it all about?

I had theorized he left me to either fulfill his friendship or a relationship with a girl on his staff. She was, to me, an exotic pool noodle. Skinny with a personality fit for plastic, she was everything I wasn’t. The only thing we had in common was our skin tone, which is dark and racially ambiguous. She was Austrian and uppity while I seem to think of myself as a bit of a devil with a good sense of humor.

What made her threatening was her problems. I knew his undergraduate psychology degree made him feel like everyone’s analyist and she had a whopper of parental pressure and daddy issues. I knew my anxiety was old news and I was coping with my own problems well. This was bad news for me.

After it all happened, it took what felt like forever to get over the heartache I felt. Luckily, I sat in bed, eating a rice bowl and sobbed. A thick tear ran down my cheek and fell into the yellow rice. This sounds like what would happen before the protagonist in a depressing novel hangs herself, but my good humor came in handy.

“Ew,” I said to myself and then, I started laughing. I looked in the mirror and questioned what I had been doing. Red-faced and haggard, I saw what I never wanted to be and refused to be again. I felt as though this was the bottom of the hole and a rope had been thrown down to me.

My friend, Tommy, came over after to check on me as he did many times in those first few months and we laughed about how stupid I was being. I was hiding from the world and crying over Tex-Mex. This was, by far, the most ridiculous thing anyone could do. I was a pathetic joke.

He had thrown the rope, whether he knew it or not.

Getting dumped sucks, as most people know, but I wouldn’t have traded it for the world. I know what I am worth, which is a lot, and know what I want. I saw myself down so I can appreciate being up.

I had been depressed before, but in the way kids always are. This is what made him want me though I didn’t need fixing. I’ll always freak out about stupid things and worry about things I can’t control, but I am the one who is experiencing that. I can learn how to deal with it and adapt if I have to.

We are all broken little birds. We have daddy issues, body struggles, too much work, no fun, empty wallets and student loans. We just need another bird to fill the nest, not set our broken wings.