Last summer Karyn stumbled upon a book called Love is a Mix Tape, an autobiographical work by a music journalist named Rob Sheffield. She was startled when she read the description, and how much it sounded like a story she knew well: the story of Cara and me.
He was tall. She was short. He was shy. She was a social butterfly. She was the only one who laughed at his jokes when they were so bad, and they were always bad. They had nothing in common [okay, that part doesn't fit, because Cara and I had a lot in common] except that they both loved music. Music brought them together and kept them together. And it was music that would help Rob through a sudden, unfathomable loss.
I read the book and liked it a lot. I liked the way Sheffield tied music to the memories associated with that music, something I (obviously) do a lot of myself. It was interesting to me how there were aspects of Sheffield's widow experience that were very familiar and other aspects that were very different from my own experience. One part that was very different was that for him, after being widowed, there were songs he felt he could never listen to again. It was never that way for me. There are countless songs and albums that are indelibly linked in my mind to Cara. I never stopped wanting to listen to those songs. Some I even had a renewed desire to hear.
On the other hand...
Going to the Dawes concert was a really big deal to me. Because I had been to one previous Dawes concert, and it was my first date with EB. I actually hadn't known much about the band before that date. Knowing I really liked going to concerts, EB had suggested going to one at Nashville's famous Ryman Auditorium, and I thought Dawes sounded interesting. That show was also really good. I didn't know at the time how much I would come to love Dawes. I listened to a whole lot of their music over the next few months. Then EB broke up with me. And I completely stopped listening to Dawes for almost half a year.
That was a very difficult time in my life. I think it was hard for most people to really grasp how difficult it was. Your wife dies? Of course that's going to be devastating and take a long while to move past. But a breakup? That happens to everyone, right? I remember on more than one occasion in the early part of last year when friends asked how I was doing and seemed surprised when I said that I had been having a pretty rough time for the last few months.
I wrote in the aftermath of the breakup about why it was so incredibly painful. I did so while also trying to keep truly detailed descriptions of the events to a minimum, partly out of a desire to protect EB. At this point, because neither of us has been in any way a part of each other's lives for quite some time, I no longer feel a need to try to protect EB. That doesn't mean I want to drag her name through the mud or go out of my way to make her look bad. I certainly don't think she's a bad person. But I also want to continue to regain control of my life and part of that means being able to tell the story of my life if I so desire. And I think it's worth sharing, because I like sharing my writing, and I do think it's a pretty compelling story, and there might even be lessons others could take from it. Lessons that could be helpful if they ever see someone they know in a similar situation.
What happened that caused me so much pain really was a perfect storm of awful. It's said that the first time someone breaks up with you is always especially hard. Check. It's also said, among those of us who have been widowed, that the first time after you're widowed that you get into a serious relationship but then it ends is especially hard. Check. And then there was the worst part of all, which was that this wasn't just the end of a relationship for me, it was my family being taken away.
Note: because I was asked to censor EB's daughter's name from my blog, I'm going to refer to EB's daughter as EBD.
As Karyn (who is probably the only other person who really knows what this has been like for me) said to me many months ago: "You were supposed to have a family with Cara. And that didn't happen. And then you thought you had found that family with EB and EBD."
And then, very suddenly and inexplicably, I hadn't.
I didn't go into that relationship looking to become a father to someone else's kid. I actually thought before meeting EB that I probably wouldn't want to date someone with a kid because the presence of a kid might get in the way of my building a relationship with the kid's mother. The first time I visited Nashville, EBD was staying elsewhere for the weekend and I only briefly met her. The first time EB visited Cleveland, EBD did not come with her. The second time I visited Nashville, EB declared that she wanted the three of us to start doing things together, kind of like beginning a test run of us being a family.
Perhaps, in retrospect, that should have been a red flag that she decided to do that so early.
I don't want to portray myself as an entirely innocent victim. EB and I are both adults. We're both responsible for our own actions. I could have proceeded with more caution than I did. At the same time, I don't think it's unfair to say that she bears more responsibility for what happened, because she was the one who very quickly and rashly put her own child into that situation.
I remember something EB told me when we were just beginning to get to know each other, that she felt like we widows were like another species. I thought that was a weird thing to say, although I didn't tell her. Sure, widowhood fundamentally changes you, but so do a lot of other experiences. I don't think that widows are so different from everyone else that we're like a whole separate species from "normal" people.
At some point later on, EB told me that she felt becoming a parent changes a person just as much as becoming a widow, just in different ways.
So she felt that becoming a widow changes a person so much that that person is like a member of a different species, and that becoming a parent changes a person just as much as becoming a widow.
She was already both a parent and a widow. I was the latter, but not the former. I knew from personal experience how becoming a widow changes a person. I had no idea what becoming a parent was like. Cara and I had tried, unsuccessfully, to have children, but back then the idea of becoming a parent was only a hypothetical to me. The bond between a parent and a child, from the parent's side, was something I had never felt in the slightest.
EBD and I quickly bonded in a remarkable way. The first weekend that the three of us spent together, one of our activities was going on a hike at a state park. During the hike, EBD decided to take off running on the trail ahead of EB and me. I decided to join her, and the two of us ran giddily together through the woods. "It was about the most amazing feeling in the world," I wrote a few days later.
EB clearly approved of and encouraged the bond between EBD and me. She did this in a number of ways, both implicit and explicit. The one that still stands out to me most of all happened on Father's Day, when EB and EBD were in Cleveland with my whole family (that year's Breathe Deep Cleveland charity event that Cara had helped found took place the day before Father's Day). The two of us were in the kitchen of my apartment while everyone else was in another room and she looked at me and said, "Happy becoming a father day."
Perhaps to her that was just an offhand comment that popped into her mind in that moment. I'll never really know. To me it was an incredibly significant statement. From that moment on, being a father to EBD was one of the most important things in my life. Perhaps even eventually the most important.
And yes, I never took on the full day-to-day responsibilities of fatherhood. It was an odd thing, I remember commenting to EB once, going back and forth between being for all intents and purposes a father to EBD (when I was in Nashville or when they were here in Cleveland) for just a few days at a time and my life by myself in Cleveland the rest of the time. I didn't feel like EB and I had a "part-time" relationship because we talked every day, but I did feel kind of like a "part-time father." Yet I embraced that father role wholeheartedly. And although in retrospect there were a few times when EB was trying to hint at the fact that she had not-insignificant doubts about our future together, she never stopped treating the three of us as a family, so I never felt any reason to doubt that the three of us would continue to be a family. And so naturally, after having in my heart and mind made that fundamental transformation into being a parent, it was utterly devastating when the magical experience of me-as-father abruptly ended.
I have no idea how EBD handled the events, but I can't imagine it was easy on her. It was clear that she was drawn to me much as I was drawn to her. I remember when, after EB returned home from her first weekend in Cleveland, EB told her daughter that the two of us had decided to become boyfriend and girlfriend, and EBD's initial reaction was to become very upset and say we shouldn't do that. EB was eventually able to draw out the reason for this reaction, and it was that EBD remembered her mommy's previous boyfriend, and the fact that they had broken up, and she therefore believed that a breakup was an inevitable consequence of two people becoming boyfriend and girlfriend. EBD and I hardly knew each other at that point in time but she already liked me a lot (the feeling, obviously, was mutual).
One of the sweetest things was how much she loved running with me. "Come on, Jeffy," she'd exclaim, looking up at me while on a walk, and the two of us would take off together. I remember well how, on the way home from a park in my hometown of Grandview Heights, a seemingly tired EBD was being pushed in a stroller, until my mom mentioned to her that the long hill we were walking up was one I had often run up when I was younger, and EBD immediately hopped out of the stroller to race up the hill with me.
I also know that the view of the three of us as a family that EB instilled in me was picked up on and embraced by her daughter as well. Later in that same weekend that we visited my family, EB, EBD, and I were at the swimming pool with my mom. At one point as we played in the pool, EB, EBD, and I all went underwater together, and upon surfacing EBD declared, "We're the best family!"
I'm sure that eventually EBD will forget most, if not all, of what happened, but I know it must have been hard for her, a little girl whose life was already so affected by loss. And I do wonder if there will be any lasting effects.
I also know it was hard on my parents.
I myself was profoundly affected by the whole experience. In the immediate aftermath I became deeply depressed, and I continued to experience bouts of depression for many months afterward. The feeling of being depressed was not novel to me, but the anxiety that I came to feel about being in a relationship, that was something I had never before experienced to any notable extent. And the anxiety has stuck around much longer than the depression. I've gotten help, and my mental health now is dramatically better than it was a year ago, but those feelings of anxiety haven't entirely stopped. One thing (among many) that has helped, trivial as it might seem, is just being able to recognize what I'm feeling. When I first started spending serious time with Karyn, that uncomfortable, tense but not really a headache feeling that would pop up in the sides and back of my head was a new and strange thing that I didn't understand.
The anxiety isn't the only long-term effect on me of my relationship with EB and its dissolution. I think it's almost undoubtedly harder now for me to feel really deeply connected and attached to another person. But then maybe those feelings came too easily before. Another effect, and hopefully a more positive one in the long run, is that, as Karyn put it, usually it's women our age who have "baby fever," but I seem to have it. And I won't deny that she's right.
Every time that I see a young girl in the approximate age range of EBD, it's impossible for me not to think of her. Perhaps right now my life would be at least a little happier if that whole painful experience could be erased from my mind, but obviously it can't be. Those memories will never entirely disappear. And so I choose to cherish the memories and look back on them as fondly as I can. When I think of special moments shared between me and the girl who was briefly my daughter, I smile. It's a wistful smile, and it's not without pain, but then I already had a great deal of experience with those sorts of memories. Memories I shared with someone I loved very much, and who loved me very much, and who was taken away from me with neither of us having any say in the matter. I'm absolutely not saying that EBD was as significant in my life as Cara was, or that I miss her as much as I miss Cara, but at the same time, that girl will always be an important person in the history of my life. And so just as I'm eternally grateful for all the wonderful time I got to spend with Cara, I've also developed a feeling of gratitude for the time I got to spend with EBD.
In the aftermath of Cara's death, it was very important to me and helpful to my healing process to share my memories of Cara with other people whenever the opportunity arose. And it still is important for me to share memories of Cara, although it's no longer something I feel the need to do all the time. This experience has been different because whereas people are generally very receptive to hearing stories about my late wife, I have a sense that it would be looked at as strange for me to want to share stories about my ex-girlfriend's daughter. Like I would be doing something wrong. Obviously the situations are very different. But those memories are not going to disappear from my mind and sometimes I do feel a desire to share some of them. They really are amazing memories.
A little more than two weeks before EB broke up with me, during my second-to-last visit to Nashville, I took EBD on a shopping trip on what was the first, and as it turned out the only, outing the two of us took together without EB. We went to Target to shop for birthday presents for EB. (As it happened, we celebrated both Cara's and EB's birthdays that weekend, as they fall just five days apart.) It was a really big deal for me to go on that shopping trip. Looking back, I wonder if having her four-year-old daughter go on an outing with a man who wasn't the girl's late father caused EB to secretly experience severe anxiety of the sort I was experiencing at times last year. From my perspective, the trip went well. I knew that becoming a parent was a big responsibility and that I had not yet nearly taken on the full measure of that responsibility and it was important to me to continue to take concrete steps in that direction. My favorite moment of the shopping trip, during which the two of us collaborated to select several presents, was when we were standing in front of a display of body washes and EBD pointed to one labeled "age-defying" on the bottle and suggested we buy it. I immediately started laughing, so she asked what was funny. Getting a four-year-old to grasp why it was funny that she had suggested an "age-defying" product as a present for her mom's 37th birthday would likely be rather difficult, but I told her that her mom would understand.
Two weeks later my parents and my brother joined me for another visit to Nashville. The last thing we all did together was visit the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center. As we walked back to our separate cars after eating dinner (I was catching a ride to the airport with my family), EBD, holding my hand, started skipping, and the two of us skipped hand-in-hand ahead of the rest of the group. At the time the plan was that on the very next weekend I would be meeting up with EB and EBD in North Carolina to attend a wedding with EB. I told EBD that I would be seeing her again in just five days. EB, hugging my mom, said, "We'll see you in December" (we'd discussed making plans for the holidays). The following evening, in a video chat with me, EB ended the relationship.
So yeah, that sure was a thing that happened.
I won't rehash the details of how incredibly painful it was, but now that a good amount of time has passed, I am able to safely conclude this: the breakup, although not the worst thing that ever happened to me, was undoubtedly the most emotionally damaging thing that ever happened to me.
I want to mention here what I think is the main lesson of this experience that I want to impart to others: in a dating situation in which one of the adults has a child, the adults and the child shouldn't start "being a family" together until the adults are sure they want to be together for a long time. And you can't really be sure after just one month of dating, even if it feels like you are.
Returning now to the topic that originally prompted this post... over the course of the relationship, the music of Dawes had become very meaningful to me. They had become, it's fair to say, one of my favorite bands. The morning after the breakup, when I began backing out of my driveway to go to work and their song "All Your Favorite Bands" came on the radio, is a moment that will stick in my mind forever. A song, about life after a breakup, by the band I had seen on my first date with my now ex-girlfriend, coming on the radio first thing in the morning the day after that ex-girlfriend broke up with me? Of all the strange coincidences that I've noticed and catalogued in my life, that just might be the strangest of all. It was certainly the most cinematic moment of my life. One of those moments that make you think this can't be real, it's all some crazy story that someone is writing and I'm just one of the characters. I recall laughing hysterically through tears at the absurdity.
I didn't turn off the radio or change the station. I let the whole song play. It was just too fitting. After that, though, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I stopped listening to Dawes. I just had no desire at all to hear their music. That was the case for almost half a year, and that was one of the most difficult half years of my life, only surpassed by times when I was experiencing truly horrendous physical pain. But eventually, a thought began to form in my mind. A thought that I had really liked the music of Dawes not just because of its connection to my relationship with EB, but because it was just plain good music, and by depriving myself of enjoying music that I really liked, I was letting EB have power over my life that I didn't need to let her have. The first time I pulled up one of their albums on my iPod, in late March, it was with a tentative feeling that I pushed the play button. But as the familiar music filled my ears I found that yes, I did still enjoy listening to it. Listening to it was very different than listening to it had been before. There was a pain associated with it that hadn't previously existed. But I still enjoyed it. And that made me feel happy. It was a small but significant personal victory. And it was around then that I really started to make progress on feeling better about my life, although there were still some further bumps in the road.
As the year progressed, the music of Dawes once more became very important to me. In fact (I know this from my last.fm charts), despite that lengthy period in which I did not listen to them at all, they ended up being not only my most listened to band of 2017, but also my most listened to band of 2018. It struck me as I began listening to them more that they have a number of good breakup songs, so that probably helped.
When I saw the band's fall tour dates, I quickly decided that it was very important for me to go to one of the shows, and with the closest one being in Pittsburgh, I had no hesitation about making the two-hour drive. Just as listening to Dawes' music again and enjoying it had been a small personal victory, I knew that going to another Dawes concert and enjoying it would be another personal victory. Perhaps a more significant one, because to me there is just something about a really good concert - so many of my most favorite memories are from really good concerts - and I knew from that evening in Nashville that Dawes would put on a really good concert. By the time the date of the show, September 12, rolled around, I was very excited to go. And I was not let down in the slightest.
Of course, there were a number of times during the two plus hour performance that my thoughts turned to my previous relationship and its dissolution. So many of the lyrics seemed fitting as a soundtrack to those events.
From "Somewhere Along the Way":
But somewhere along the way
The dots didn’t all connect
The promise became regrets
From "Things Happen":
Let’s make a list of all the things the world has put you through
Let’s raise a glass to all the people you’re not speaking to
I don’t know what else you wanted me to say to you
Things happen
That’s all they ever do
From "Roll With the Punches":
You just roll with the punches
Until you can't feel a thing
You just roll with the punches
Aww yeah
("Roll with the punches - that's what we do," I recall EB saying to me, referring to our experiences with loss. Yep.)
"Somewhere Along the Way" closes on a more hopeful note:
But somewhere along the way
I started to smile again
I don’t remember when
Somewhere along the way
Things will turn out just fine
I know it’s true this time
In the summer of 2017, when I was dating EB, these lyrics already had a lot of meaning to me. It's now become a recurring theme in my life - horrible, painful things happen (that's all, it sometimes seems, they ever do), and then I claw my way back, and somewhere along the way I start to smile again. I'd like to think that things in my life will turn out just fine. I don't know it's true. But I'd like to think it's true.
My starting to listen to Dawes last spring happened to come around the time when I once more started to genuinely smile again. And my going to the concert last fall happened to come around the time when that smile finally began to more regularly and consistently come to my face. Since then, things in my life have continued to be pretty good. Being able to say that for more than a half year running is something to be grateful for.
Of course, Dawes also played "All Your Favorite Bands" at the concert. And as I sang along with the rest of the crowd, I of course thought back to that morning in my car. Hearing that song at that moment, as surreal and painful as it was, is now something I'm grateful for too. How many people have the ability to truthfully tell a story like that? When life throws something that crazy at you, sometimes you just have to laugh and appreciate the craziness.
Among the lyrics to the song are these lines:
When I think of you, you've still got on that hat that says "Let’s Party"
I hope that thing is never thrown away
Naturally the Dawes merch table sells a hat that says "Let's Party" on it, so after the show ended, on a giddy concert high, and in the spirit of embracing and owning the events of my past and taking as much control as I can over my present and future, I bought the hat.
Maybe it was a weird thing to do. Probably most people wouldn't buy a piece of merchandise so strikingly symbolic of a past relationship that ended in a painful breakup. For me, just like starting to listen to Dawes again and just like going to the concert, buying and wearing that hat was a small declaration of victory, of being able to move on and have a happy life after another traumatic experience, while acknowledging that that experience is something I'll always carry with me and will forever help shape the course of my life. And so I look forward to wearing the hat to more Dawes concerts in the future.
I don't want to portray myself as an entirely innocent victim. EB and I are both adults. We're both responsible for our own actions. I could have proceeded with more caution than I did. At the same time, I don't think it's unfair to say that she bears more responsibility for what happened, because she was the one who very quickly and rashly put her own child into that situation.
I remember something EB told me when we were just beginning to get to know each other, that she felt like we widows were like another species. I thought that was a weird thing to say, although I didn't tell her. Sure, widowhood fundamentally changes you, but so do a lot of other experiences. I don't think that widows are so different from everyone else that we're like a whole separate species from "normal" people.
At some point later on, EB told me that she felt becoming a parent changes a person just as much as becoming a widow, just in different ways.
So she felt that becoming a widow changes a person so much that that person is like a member of a different species, and that becoming a parent changes a person just as much as becoming a widow.
She was already both a parent and a widow. I was the latter, but not the former. I knew from personal experience how becoming a widow changes a person. I had no idea what becoming a parent was like. Cara and I had tried, unsuccessfully, to have children, but back then the idea of becoming a parent was only a hypothetical to me. The bond between a parent and a child, from the parent's side, was something I had never felt in the slightest.
EBD and I quickly bonded in a remarkable way. The first weekend that the three of us spent together, one of our activities was going on a hike at a state park. During the hike, EBD decided to take off running on the trail ahead of EB and me. I decided to join her, and the two of us ran giddily together through the woods. "It was about the most amazing feeling in the world," I wrote a few days later.
EB clearly approved of and encouraged the bond between EBD and me. She did this in a number of ways, both implicit and explicit. The one that still stands out to me most of all happened on Father's Day, when EB and EBD were in Cleveland with my whole family (that year's Breathe Deep Cleveland charity event that Cara had helped found took place the day before Father's Day). The two of us were in the kitchen of my apartment while everyone else was in another room and she looked at me and said, "Happy becoming a father day."
Perhaps to her that was just an offhand comment that popped into her mind in that moment. I'll never really know. To me it was an incredibly significant statement. From that moment on, being a father to EBD was one of the most important things in my life. Perhaps even eventually the most important.
And yes, I never took on the full day-to-day responsibilities of fatherhood. It was an odd thing, I remember commenting to EB once, going back and forth between being for all intents and purposes a father to EBD (when I was in Nashville or when they were here in Cleveland) for just a few days at a time and my life by myself in Cleveland the rest of the time. I didn't feel like EB and I had a "part-time" relationship because we talked every day, but I did feel kind of like a "part-time father." Yet I embraced that father role wholeheartedly. And although in retrospect there were a few times when EB was trying to hint at the fact that she had not-insignificant doubts about our future together, she never stopped treating the three of us as a family, so I never felt any reason to doubt that the three of us would continue to be a family. And so naturally, after having in my heart and mind made that fundamental transformation into being a parent, it was utterly devastating when the magical experience of me-as-father abruptly ended.
I have no idea how EBD handled the events, but I can't imagine it was easy on her. It was clear that she was drawn to me much as I was drawn to her. I remember when, after EB returned home from her first weekend in Cleveland, EB told her daughter that the two of us had decided to become boyfriend and girlfriend, and EBD's initial reaction was to become very upset and say we shouldn't do that. EB was eventually able to draw out the reason for this reaction, and it was that EBD remembered her mommy's previous boyfriend, and the fact that they had broken up, and she therefore believed that a breakup was an inevitable consequence of two people becoming boyfriend and girlfriend. EBD and I hardly knew each other at that point in time but she already liked me a lot (the feeling, obviously, was mutual).
One of the sweetest things was how much she loved running with me. "Come on, Jeffy," she'd exclaim, looking up at me while on a walk, and the two of us would take off together. I remember well how, on the way home from a park in my hometown of Grandview Heights, a seemingly tired EBD was being pushed in a stroller, until my mom mentioned to her that the long hill we were walking up was one I had often run up when I was younger, and EBD immediately hopped out of the stroller to race up the hill with me.
I also know that the view of the three of us as a family that EB instilled in me was picked up on and embraced by her daughter as well. Later in that same weekend that we visited my family, EB, EBD, and I were at the swimming pool with my mom. At one point as we played in the pool, EB, EBD, and I all went underwater together, and upon surfacing EBD declared, "We're the best family!"
I'm sure that eventually EBD will forget most, if not all, of what happened, but I know it must have been hard for her, a little girl whose life was already so affected by loss. And I do wonder if there will be any lasting effects.
I also know it was hard on my parents.
I myself was profoundly affected by the whole experience. In the immediate aftermath I became deeply depressed, and I continued to experience bouts of depression for many months afterward. The feeling of being depressed was not novel to me, but the anxiety that I came to feel about being in a relationship, that was something I had never before experienced to any notable extent. And the anxiety has stuck around much longer than the depression. I've gotten help, and my mental health now is dramatically better than it was a year ago, but those feelings of anxiety haven't entirely stopped. One thing (among many) that has helped, trivial as it might seem, is just being able to recognize what I'm feeling. When I first started spending serious time with Karyn, that uncomfortable, tense but not really a headache feeling that would pop up in the sides and back of my head was a new and strange thing that I didn't understand.
The anxiety isn't the only long-term effect on me of my relationship with EB and its dissolution. I think it's almost undoubtedly harder now for me to feel really deeply connected and attached to another person. But then maybe those feelings came too easily before. Another effect, and hopefully a more positive one in the long run, is that, as Karyn put it, usually it's women our age who have "baby fever," but I seem to have it. And I won't deny that she's right.
Every time that I see a young girl in the approximate age range of EBD, it's impossible for me not to think of her. Perhaps right now my life would be at least a little happier if that whole painful experience could be erased from my mind, but obviously it can't be. Those memories will never entirely disappear. And so I choose to cherish the memories and look back on them as fondly as I can. When I think of special moments shared between me and the girl who was briefly my daughter, I smile. It's a wistful smile, and it's not without pain, but then I already had a great deal of experience with those sorts of memories. Memories I shared with someone I loved very much, and who loved me very much, and who was taken away from me with neither of us having any say in the matter. I'm absolutely not saying that EBD was as significant in my life as Cara was, or that I miss her as much as I miss Cara, but at the same time, that girl will always be an important person in the history of my life. And so just as I'm eternally grateful for all the wonderful time I got to spend with Cara, I've also developed a feeling of gratitude for the time I got to spend with EBD.
In the aftermath of Cara's death, it was very important to me and helpful to my healing process to share my memories of Cara with other people whenever the opportunity arose. And it still is important for me to share memories of Cara, although it's no longer something I feel the need to do all the time. This experience has been different because whereas people are generally very receptive to hearing stories about my late wife, I have a sense that it would be looked at as strange for me to want to share stories about my ex-girlfriend's daughter. Like I would be doing something wrong. Obviously the situations are very different. But those memories are not going to disappear from my mind and sometimes I do feel a desire to share some of them. They really are amazing memories.
A little more than two weeks before EB broke up with me, during my second-to-last visit to Nashville, I took EBD on a shopping trip on what was the first, and as it turned out the only, outing the two of us took together without EB. We went to Target to shop for birthday presents for EB. (As it happened, we celebrated both Cara's and EB's birthdays that weekend, as they fall just five days apart.) It was a really big deal for me to go on that shopping trip. Looking back, I wonder if having her four-year-old daughter go on an outing with a man who wasn't the girl's late father caused EB to secretly experience severe anxiety of the sort I was experiencing at times last year. From my perspective, the trip went well. I knew that becoming a parent was a big responsibility and that I had not yet nearly taken on the full measure of that responsibility and it was important to me to continue to take concrete steps in that direction. My favorite moment of the shopping trip, during which the two of us collaborated to select several presents, was when we were standing in front of a display of body washes and EBD pointed to one labeled "age-defying" on the bottle and suggested we buy it. I immediately started laughing, so she asked what was funny. Getting a four-year-old to grasp why it was funny that she had suggested an "age-defying" product as a present for her mom's 37th birthday would likely be rather difficult, but I told her that her mom would understand.
Two weeks later my parents and my brother joined me for another visit to Nashville. The last thing we all did together was visit the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center. As we walked back to our separate cars after eating dinner (I was catching a ride to the airport with my family), EBD, holding my hand, started skipping, and the two of us skipped hand-in-hand ahead of the rest of the group. At the time the plan was that on the very next weekend I would be meeting up with EB and EBD in North Carolina to attend a wedding with EB. I told EBD that I would be seeing her again in just five days. EB, hugging my mom, said, "We'll see you in December" (we'd discussed making plans for the holidays). The following evening, in a video chat with me, EB ended the relationship.
So yeah, that sure was a thing that happened.
I won't rehash the details of how incredibly painful it was, but now that a good amount of time has passed, I am able to safely conclude this: the breakup, although not the worst thing that ever happened to me, was undoubtedly the most emotionally damaging thing that ever happened to me.
I want to mention here what I think is the main lesson of this experience that I want to impart to others: in a dating situation in which one of the adults has a child, the adults and the child shouldn't start "being a family" together until the adults are sure they want to be together for a long time. And you can't really be sure after just one month of dating, even if it feels like you are.
Returning now to the topic that originally prompted this post... over the course of the relationship, the music of Dawes had become very meaningful to me. They had become, it's fair to say, one of my favorite bands. The morning after the breakup, when I began backing out of my driveway to go to work and their song "All Your Favorite Bands" came on the radio, is a moment that will stick in my mind forever. A song, about life after a breakup, by the band I had seen on my first date with my now ex-girlfriend, coming on the radio first thing in the morning the day after that ex-girlfriend broke up with me? Of all the strange coincidences that I've noticed and catalogued in my life, that just might be the strangest of all. It was certainly the most cinematic moment of my life. One of those moments that make you think this can't be real, it's all some crazy story that someone is writing and I'm just one of the characters. I recall laughing hysterically through tears at the absurdity.
I didn't turn off the radio or change the station. I let the whole song play. It was just too fitting. After that, though, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I stopped listening to Dawes. I just had no desire at all to hear their music. That was the case for almost half a year, and that was one of the most difficult half years of my life, only surpassed by times when I was experiencing truly horrendous physical pain. But eventually, a thought began to form in my mind. A thought that I had really liked the music of Dawes not just because of its connection to my relationship with EB, but because it was just plain good music, and by depriving myself of enjoying music that I really liked, I was letting EB have power over my life that I didn't need to let her have. The first time I pulled up one of their albums on my iPod, in late March, it was with a tentative feeling that I pushed the play button. But as the familiar music filled my ears I found that yes, I did still enjoy listening to it. Listening to it was very different than listening to it had been before. There was a pain associated with it that hadn't previously existed. But I still enjoyed it. And that made me feel happy. It was a small but significant personal victory. And it was around then that I really started to make progress on feeling better about my life, although there were still some further bumps in the road.
As the year progressed, the music of Dawes once more became very important to me. In fact (I know this from my last.fm charts), despite that lengthy period in which I did not listen to them at all, they ended up being not only my most listened to band of 2017, but also my most listened to band of 2018. It struck me as I began listening to them more that they have a number of good breakup songs, so that probably helped.
When I saw the band's fall tour dates, I quickly decided that it was very important for me to go to one of the shows, and with the closest one being in Pittsburgh, I had no hesitation about making the two-hour drive. Just as listening to Dawes' music again and enjoying it had been a small personal victory, I knew that going to another Dawes concert and enjoying it would be another personal victory. Perhaps a more significant one, because to me there is just something about a really good concert - so many of my most favorite memories are from really good concerts - and I knew from that evening in Nashville that Dawes would put on a really good concert. By the time the date of the show, September 12, rolled around, I was very excited to go. And I was not let down in the slightest.
Of course, there were a number of times during the two plus hour performance that my thoughts turned to my previous relationship and its dissolution. So many of the lyrics seemed fitting as a soundtrack to those events.
From "Somewhere Along the Way":
But somewhere along the way
The dots didn’t all connect
The promise became regrets
From "Things Happen":
Let’s make a list of all the things the world has put you through
Let’s raise a glass to all the people you’re not speaking to
I don’t know what else you wanted me to say to you
Things happen
That’s all they ever do
From "Roll With the Punches":
You just roll with the punches
Until you can't feel a thing
You just roll with the punches
Aww yeah
("Roll with the punches - that's what we do," I recall EB saying to me, referring to our experiences with loss. Yep.)
"Somewhere Along the Way" closes on a more hopeful note:
But somewhere along the way
I started to smile again
I don’t remember when
Somewhere along the way
Things will turn out just fine
I know it’s true this time
In the summer of 2017, when I was dating EB, these lyrics already had a lot of meaning to me. It's now become a recurring theme in my life - horrible, painful things happen (that's all, it sometimes seems, they ever do), and then I claw my way back, and somewhere along the way I start to smile again. I'd like to think that things in my life will turn out just fine. I don't know it's true. But I'd like to think it's true.
My starting to listen to Dawes last spring happened to come around the time when I once more started to genuinely smile again. And my going to the concert last fall happened to come around the time when that smile finally began to more regularly and consistently come to my face. Since then, things in my life have continued to be pretty good. Being able to say that for more than a half year running is something to be grateful for.
Of course, Dawes also played "All Your Favorite Bands" at the concert. And as I sang along with the rest of the crowd, I of course thought back to that morning in my car. Hearing that song at that moment, as surreal and painful as it was, is now something I'm grateful for too. How many people have the ability to truthfully tell a story like that? When life throws something that crazy at you, sometimes you just have to laugh and appreciate the craziness.
Among the lyrics to the song are these lines:
When I think of you, you've still got on that hat that says "Let’s Party"
I hope that thing is never thrown away
Naturally the Dawes merch table sells a hat that says "Let's Party" on it, so after the show ended, on a giddy concert high, and in the spirit of embracing and owning the events of my past and taking as much control as I can over my present and future, I bought the hat.
Maybe it was a weird thing to do. Probably most people wouldn't buy a piece of merchandise so strikingly symbolic of a past relationship that ended in a painful breakup. For me, just like starting to listen to Dawes again and just like going to the concert, buying and wearing that hat was a small declaration of victory, of being able to move on and have a happy life after another traumatic experience, while acknowledging that that experience is something I'll always carry with me and will forever help shape the course of my life. And so I look forward to wearing the hat to more Dawes concerts in the future.
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