Heartburns

Heartburns

Written by Meggie Phan

Art by Aleks Carney

In less than two weeks I had burnt two bridges: one was a boy I was dating for around three months, and the other was my best friend of almost three years. 

I broke up with the former over text two days after Valentine’s Day, and the other broke up with me the week of my birthday. It all sounds like karma until you realize that both of them wanted to end their relationship with me because they were too scared to speak up. 

Three months is a weirdly long but yet brief time. He was just a boy, there’s nothing else to say when you're with suburban mediocracy. There’s no heartbreak when you’re not in love. So I’ll tell you the exact moment it was over: the last time he compared me to his ex. It started as little things: she was blonde, and my hair’s jet black. But he talked about her constantly to the point where I began to feel like she was our ex. 

This wasn’t the only warning sign. I should’ve hit the ground running when he told me he was only four months out of his previous relationship. Or when he told me I was the first Asian girl he’d ever dated. Burning this bridge was easy—some would say necessary. I walked away with few casualties. Only a mild case of a bruised ego.

With my best friend of three years, this was a different story. 

We instantly connected during the first week of freshman year. Every moment since then could be condensed into one word, that was how easy it was to love them. This word is in Vietnamese, and I would use it as a special sentiment to describe what they were to me: “Quý,” treasured.

Inversely, they grew a quiet resentment for something they still won’t tell me I did. Now all that’s remembered is how their bottled-up emotions erupted like Mount Vesuvius onto my city of Pompeii. Their scorned feelings flowed like lava to our immediate circle, burning everyone and everything in its way. Our mutual friends, our creative collaborations, and our relationship—like it didn’t matter to you anymore, all our friends were now disposable to you. Was it because they were a reminder of us? 

Author Ocean Vuong taught me that as Vietnamese people, we don’t ask people “Do you miss me?”; we ask “Do you remember me?” 

So I’ll always remember that version of them that didn’t resent me, a treasured time capsule. Ain’t it funny how you’ll watch Drag Race and make playlists with another girl? You’ll drink boba, and listen to K-pop with someone else. They were never mine but I’m jealous when I imagine you doing everything I introduced to you with someone who isn’t me. I’ll always remember their McDonald’s orders, how their parents met, and all the boys they’ve had a crush on. And they’ll choose to forget that not too long ago, I was a friend.  

To be loved is to be known; I knew them, they knew me. But still, they chose to run away. Safe to say that burning that bridge was against my will. 

“I know I’ll love again. It's just a shame that it couldn’t be with you,” I thought.  

Would it be easier for us if I had retaliated? Berated you, cursed at you, wished you never got hard again. Maybe hated them back. But I’m sorry I don’t know how to hate them when I look back on our years together with bittersweet nostalgia. I’m sorry I don’t know how to hate them when I think of all the times they’ve made me laugh, quickly followed by all the times they’ve let me down. 

Every book, every movie, every song prepared me for heartbreak, but nothing could’ve prepared me to lose them. There is no feeling of shredded defeat than looking to lean on your rock to realize that that rock is the very person who betrayed you. And even if time passes and one day I forget all their little quirks, I’ll never forget how they made me feel. 

I wish I could say something more concrete than this, but the truth is: You’ll always wonder why, you’ll always search for an answer. But you’ll never find it because the two of you no longer belong to the same reality. History is not the past, but rather the construction of it. It won’t be easy to explain your past when you’re facing a revisionist historian. 

You’ll also learn that time is the enemy of all relationships. You’ll hear “right person; wrong time” when you inevitably break up with the friend you thought was going to be by your side till you’re both in nursing homes or a lover that made you feel things you have only heard in poetry. But time is nothing but a bitter tether. Time keeps us holding on for too long, even when we know the relationship is nothing but a sinking ship. It’ll keep you up at night thinking how it all passed so quickly. 

There are five stages of grief. Yet what they won’t tell you is that all these emotions won’t come in a linear stream. They’ll ebb and flow out of order. I bargained with you, trying to get an explanation of why you left. I was in denial that they played a part in the ending of our relationship. Even when I accepted my new reality, there was always a lingering thread of anger and sadness when I heard your name.  I’ll debate deleting photos of my ex-friend, even if I loved that momento. Your world will be tinted blue but soon the sun will shine again and you’ll be the whole person without your other half. 

Then you’ll walk past each other as strangers you know everything about. Maybe one of you will run away, but what’s the point when you’ve already shared a past? Say everything you can, and acknowledge where you were wrong even if it stings because it’ll help you sleep better at night. And when people ask where your other half is, be honest but brief. Wish each of them well because they’ll need it. They lost you. You’ll be the villain in their story but so are they in yours. All is fair in love and war. 

Reader, please learn from me. People always change but the memories don’t. 

Let your true story be their fiction.