The Best Advice I Ever Gave That I Now Need to Take

Erin had gone through a brutal break-up. She was devastated. She was in love the way kids are and was unceremoniously dumped. Every one of her friends and co-workers gave her a variation of the same song—

There are other fish in the sea. He just wasn't the Right One but he's out there. You'll find him before you know it.

She wanted to believe them but none of it smelled right. It felt placating like a poster with a cat on it hanging from a shelf. “Hang in there.” For nearly a month she held out hope they’d reconcile, that he would miss her as much as she missed him. They didn’t because he didn’t.

“You doing OK?”

It looked like she hadn’t been sleeping much. Her eyes looked tired and hollow. “I’m fine. No. No, I’m not fine. This sucks so bad.”

“I know.”

“What am I supposed to do? Just get over him? I don’t know how to do that. Everybody keeps telling me I’m better off, that after some time I’ll get back out there, but it feels so… sucky.”

“What do you need to hear?”

“The truth? Something to grab onto that will make this better?”

“OK. You’re not gonna like what I think.”

“Shoot.”

“That was it for you. You’re never going find someone to love you. You had your chance and you blew it. You will be single and alone for the rest of your life. That’s it. Game over. You will wander the Earth alone and simply have to make the best of that reality. Wrestle with that.”

She was shocked. Hurt. “Fuck you, dude. Fuck. You.”

She didn’t speak to me for three weeks. During that time she kept thinking about what I said. It pissed her off thinking that I might be right. It pissed her off that she loved someone who obviously didn’t love her back. She went from sad to enraged. Then she found something she desperately needed—motivation.

“Hey. I’m sorry I said fuck you.”

“No apologies. I deserved it. I’m an asshole.”

“Yeah but you weren’t wrong. Well, I hope you’re wrong but it did give me something to grab and mull.”

“Grab and mull? You mull?”

“Shut up, ass. What if you were right? What if Adam was my only shot at happiness? What was I supposed to do if that was the case?”

“So, you mulled?”

“I’m going to punch you in the nuts. What you said made me think. Mull.” And she laughed. “If he was the only person I would ever love, then I had to just go be by myself. Work on myself. Be happy alone. I guess it was exactly what I needed to hear so thank you.”

“That’s better than fuck you.”

“Oh, still fuck you. But thank you, too. I have one question, though.”

"Shoot."

"How do I do that?"

"Be happy alone? I dunno. I suppose I'd approach it like Bill Murray does in Groundhog Day. He fights and fights against his fate to relive the same day. He kills himself multiple times. Then he learns to play the piano one lesson at a time, learns to ice sculpt. Once he relaxes into accepting it all, he wakes up on February 3rd with a whole new set of skills and an appreciation of things. Maybe go skydiving."

"Skydiving? Are you crazy?"

"Dude, I'm just spitballing here. Jumping out of a plane is a test and a literal leap of faith. The odds of survival are pretty good. Go do things. Read things. Carve yourself into the person you want to be rather than bend yourself into a person someone else requires you to be to maintain that unbalanced relationship."

"I'm not jumping out of a plane."

"Suit yourself."

She did not go skydiving but she did sort out what kind of Erin she wanted to be. She visualized her version of herself she could strive for and went for it. It wasn't that she suddenly lost the feeling of abandonment or the broken heart but that she was engaged in doing things that moved her personal needle forward. She stopped looking for a partner altogether.

Six months later, she met her future husband in a restaurant. She dated slowly, suspiciously. She fell in love less like a fall and more like a choice. She did, however, learn to play guitar. Her future husband loved that she played guitar.