Heartbreak Warfare
I’m a naturally argumentative person. I have had countless fights with friends, family, random field hockey girls at games…the list goes on. You would think that, after all the hurt and hurting that comes of these fights, I would dial it back a bit, be more passive. But for a while, none of the fighting really impacted me all that much. There weren’t any dramatic turnarounds to teach me a lesson, so the fights just continued. Not horrible, nasty, cry-yourself-to-sleep fighting; just a playful sort of biting banter, the way wolves wrestle when they are young. But then he came into my life, I pushed him out of my life, and I finally learned the lesson I had coming to me for so many years.

He seemed like a nice guy. And really, he was. He always paid on dates, held my hand, was polite to my parents—he was the perfect boyfriend. Maybe I was wrong to end things. But even “perfect” has its layers. When you delve deeper, as I did, jealousy, oversensitivity, and a world of potential hurt waits under the surface. So it was over, for me at least. I wasn’t ready for someone who cared about me as much as he did, or for the serious relationship our little fling had become.
He didn’t let go easily, though. At first he played the victim, calling me crying and begging and filling me with guilt so achingly strong I almost took him back. But I held my ground, for better or for worse. I figured there was nothing worse than an unequal relationship where whoever cares less gains the power, power for which I had absolutely no desire. I thought I could handle things, until the fights began. Awful fights, with insults jabbed like knives aimed where he knew it would hurt. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words cut so deeply that I thought I would bleed to death.
One particular quarrel is carved into my brain, has scarred my mind so I can never forget. He asked me to meet him downtown. I figured we could smooth things over and finally put the past behind us. It had been months since I broke up with him—painful months of texts, emails, and phone calls that I could not bring myself to ignore. All I wanted was an end to the pain that we had both been experiencing for so long.
At first, we were fine. Civil, even. But as we walked through the streets of Lexington center, the tension between us grew. The scent of mocha wafted from Starbucks as we walked by—we had shared a hot chocolate at that very table by the window on our first date. Young lovers were laughing on the park benches of the green—we had once been that happy couple. I saw his jaw tighten, fists clench, and I knew that a trip down Memory Lane was the last thing our broken relationship needed at that time.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have met up,” I whispered. That shred of doubt, the inkling idea that maybe being friends wasn’t in our best interest...it was the catalyst, the red flag to set the bull off charging. He exploded, yelling at me like a wounded animal. Expletives and insults streamed out of his mouth; I was a terrible person, a selfish monster with the ability to crush him into tiny pieces, to ruin what he saw as love.
But really, I was just as wounded as he was. I felt it too, the unbearable pain of having your heart ripped out of your chest and the ground whisked out from underneath you. I was not a monster, just scared, hurt, and confused as to how we went from trying out a tentative friendship to screaming at each other in the middle of Mass. Avenue.
That’s what a real fight can do. When the perfect boyfriend becomes the nightmare ex, when you do everything in your power to hurt someone you love, it tears you apart and turns your world upside down. It takes a once-argumentative girl and turns her into a coward. I will always walk on eggshells now, afraid to get close enough to experience that sort of pain again. I learned that lesson that I had coming to me, a lesson I never wanted. I learned that this real, raw sort of fighting isn’t a game that you can walk out of victorious—when you fight like we did that day, no one wins.