So, as some people around here know, I'm horrible at breaking up. Just terrible at it. I'll stick around, trying to make things better, lie to myself, lie to the girl, whatever, until everything collapses into a big ball of gooey, sticky, bloody heart-matter.

Once the breakup is over, however, I'm no better -- sad, stupid, ridiculous -- for longer than an other-wise healthy person should be.

Which is all to say, that when I finally do start to see people I'm very tentative and assume I'm not ready...

So there I was, in college, driving this girl (we'll call her "this girl" for the story) home that I had gone out on a couple of dates with, when about half-way across the Bay Bridge we start to talk about how we've both "just come out" relationships, but this is exciting, but maybe the timing's not right, blah, blah. Surprisingly, in this case, she was more reticent than I.

Anyway, after much cajoling she agreed to continue seeing me. We kissed (no longer on the bay bridge, but parked in front of her dorm). In the pause immediately following, when we were gazing trustingly into each others eyes, over the radio we hear, by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young: Love the One You're With.

And if you can't be with the one
You love honey
Love the one you're with

We had a good laugh, made out some more, dated for a month, and then I broke up with her 'cause I just wasn't ready yet.

I often idealize relationships before they actually happen. I imagine how the relationship will go, how wonderful it will be, and how we will spend holidays. Therefore, I am usually disappointed in the actual outcome.

I grew up in a very small town somewhere on the East Coast. A place that is so small, we only have two-degrees of separation rather than six. So naturally, coming from a family where my parents have been together since my mother was 16, I wanted to grow old with the boy down the street that I had known since I was 4.

Finally, at 22 years old, I met him. Well, I should say, re-met him. We had gone to grade school together, just as our parents had grown up together. I was living on the West Coast now and he was living somewhere in the middle states. We rekindled our friendship over a holiday break in the small East Coast beach town we grew up in.

We spent Christmas together, New Years Eve, and a few other key holiday moments. Finally, the time came for each of us to depart to separate states. We kept in touch via email, phone and google chat. Times were great. We were as exclusive as a couple can be with several states between us.

He planned a trip to come visit me for Valentine’s Day. Finally, we could spend time together. Only problem was, once he arrived at the airport, I started to get anxiety. He was not the man I thought he was. Every little thing he did annoyed me. He couldn’t carry on intelligent conversation. He was too clingy. I wanted to scream.

I dropped him off at his friends house and ignored his calls. Thank god he wasn’t staying with me. Finally, the day before he was set to go back to one of those middle states, I called him and asked him to meet me at Starbucks.

We were talking and catching up when Starbucks told us we had to leave because they were closing. So we continued our conversation, sitting on the curb of the parking lot. It was there that I told him I didn’t want to be with him, that I could no longer see him or talk to him. It was that night, on the dirty, yellow-painted curb of a parking lot, that I broke up with a boy on Valentine ’s Day....after he flew halfway across the country to see me.

J's story is gut-wrenching!

I had the perfect girl and I treated her like crap and she broke up with me and I acted like I didn't care and it's 20 years later and I think about her every single day and have regretted it every moment for every day for 20 years. Also, she liked Springsteen a lot.

She like Springsteen? A lot? Dude, what were you thinking?

Actually, she turned me on to Springsteen. I had my Springsteen epiphany before I met her (in college), but my appreciation was not broad and deep. She had older brothers so she was light years ahead of me as far as rock music went. When I saw how Springsteen spoke to her soul and what she got from his music, I started to understand both of them better. And fall in love with both of them. Though that still didn't stop me from treating her like crap. Cause I was a bit of a dick. Hopefully not as much anymore, but too late for Lisa.

There is an image that is crystal clear in my mind and will stay with me forever. Whenever I hear Thunder Road I can see, as if it is happening again before my eyes, a beautiful 19 year old girl at a college party, singing into her "microphone" (a bottle of Bud) - "You ain't a beauty, but hey you're alright. Oh and that's alright with me."

I never felt magic crazy as this
I never saw moons knew the meaning of the sea
I never held emotion in the palm of my hand
Or felt sweet breezes in the top of a tree
But now you’re here
Brighten my northern sky

-'Northern Sky,' Nick Drake

In the mid-90's my girlfriend, Leigh, and I moved from the mountains to the west coast, to finish the degrees we had each taken a year or two away from. We were students in a new town, living poor, and a little lonely. But the area was beautiful and eventually we reconnected with a small group of friends who moved there too.

Because of some minor drama among my family, I had to make a month-long trip home. Leigh stayed for school and work, but we phoned each other every chance we got. One morning she called to let me know she wouldn't be home until later that night, so to call her then. That night we were talking and I asked her to mail me a couple of my CDs, including Nick Drake's BRYTER LAYTER.

"Geoff borrowed that one, it's at his place" she told me.

"Oh, did he come over today," I asked?

"No, he was here last week sometime," Leigh said.

"But when you called me this morning that disc was playing. I heard it in the background."

Silence.

"Mike, there's something I have to tell you... I stayed at Geoff's last night..."

Needless to say, even after I returned and reclaimed my things it was a few years before I could bring myself to listen to BRYTER LAYTER again.