Currently listening to: My Immortal – Evanescence
I was reminded of two very specific, very visceral moments while reading Violet’s “Would?”—times I found myself spiraling into a rabbit hole of looking up an ex online.
The first time, I was searching for my first boyfriend, Chris. We’d long been over, and I had thrown away all our pictures because every time I came across a photo of us, I’d cry for hours, sometimes curled in bed, other times just staring out the window wondering how something that once felt so alive could leave behind such silence.
Eventually, though, I started to miss seeing his face. Time had dulled the pain and I wondered if my memory was playing tricks on me—if I still remembered the slope of his smile, the way his eyes squinted when he laughed. I needed confirmation.
So, like any amateur sleuth, I turned to Google. But his name was common—and the search yielded a sea of strangers. Frustrated and annoyed, I tried another route. I remembered the street he used to live on back in Minnesota. I remembered his dad’s name. I cross-referenced LinkedIn and Facebook, piecing together breadcrumbs till I found his father’s Facebook page—and in one of the albums, a tagged family photo. And there he was. My memory hadn’t betrayed me. He still looked the same, maybe a little older around the edges, but still him. I felt a tear slide down my cheek before I even realized I was crying. I clicked on his name, heart thudding—and there it was: his Facebook page. He was married now. He had a daughter. They looked genuinely happy. Like, movie-ending happy.
I didn’t feel bitterness, not really. Just a hollow kind of sadness. For myself and for what we could’ve been. I also felt like a world class creeper for going to the extent that I did. I had an internal monologue going on in my brain, about what a pathetic loser I was for doing this. But at least now, I could let that chapter go…
The second time was after things ended with Big Bang. We had dated for over a year—he was kind, warm, funny, and sensitive. He was Korean, former Army paratrooper, adopted by white parents, and culturally more American than I was. My mom hated that. She called him a “banana”—yellow on the outside, white on the inside—and told me he wasn’t “really” Korean. The irony is, I often felt the same about myself. The difference was that I had been taught the language, the customs, the manners; he hadn’t.
We broke up because of her disapproval. There’s more to say there—a mess of loyalty, guilt, and heartbreak—but I’ll save that for another time.
A year later, my mom had the audacity to bring him up again. “What happened to Big Bang?” she asked casually over dinner. “He was actually very polite, maybe I was wrong about him. You should check if he’s still single.”
I nearly choked on my own fucking saliva. I wanted to scream. Now she wanted to reconsider?
Out of morbid curiosity, and maybe just a little hope, I searched for him online. And there it was—The Knot announcement, clear as day. He was engaged. To a Korean girl. They’d written a cute little blurb about how they met, how they were soulmates, how they knew from the beginning. I stared at their photo, the joy they portrayed in their engagement picture said it all.
He had moved on. Fast. Maybe that’s how it works when you’re truly done—when you’ve closed the door, locked it, and thrown away the key. He got over me in record time.
I felt a whirlwind of things: rage at my mom for sabotaging something good, guilt for letting her, happiness (begrudgingly) for him, and a pang of loneliness I didn’t quite know how to soothe. I wished I hadn’t looked.
But I looked anyway.
Because sometimes, you want to see what became of the people who once held pieces of you. Even if it hurts.
Even if it changes nothing.
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