We’ve been having a lot of fun here at Songs for the Dumped, but let us not forget that these are stories of heartache, woe, ache and heartwoe, and that most of this good-hearted ironic nostalgia is probably just an attempt to mask several years’ worth of bitter, bitter pain. Thankfully, like Charlie Brown did with Christmas, our own Taylor Long can tell us what Valentine’s Day really is about. Lights, please?

“Sing When You’re Losing”
By Taylor Long

I’ve been officially dumped once. There’s no reason to brag behind it, I just tend to avoid relationships altogether, so I’ve been minorly dumped a ton, but really, truly dumped once.

It was the middle of my senior year of college and I’d been dating a guy, Kevin, long-distance for about six months. It had been clear for awhile that things were just too difficult, for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was his being in San Diego and wanting to move to Seattle, and my being in New York and wanting to stay in New York.

He came to Seattle to visit me after Christmas, but my mother had just undergone a huge surgery, so I was an emotional mess, and because of that instead of doing the smart thing and talking about our problems, I decided the best thing to do was avoid talking about them completely in hopes that we would just forget them (ha!), and have a good trip. Unsurprisingly, that didn’t happen. We fought a lot, and it was a very upsetting, miserable time for me, for both of us. (more…)