Breaking Up and Getting Up
A Guy Learning from Heartbreak

Illustration by Quavas Scott l VOX Staff

By Brok Mabry
VOX Staff

In early February, my girlfriend of 10 months, Ashley* and I broke up. At first I was elated about the freedom and couldn’t wait to plunge myself back into the ripping waters of the single scene, flirting and cavorting with whomever I chose without an ounce of guilt. I saw our split as the perfect opportunity to reassert my sex appeal to the rest of the female world and to secure my independent masculinity.

Though the initial reason Ashley and I broke up was that neither of us was happy with the other, I soon found I was even unhappier without her. After spending weeks drowning in self-pity, I finally realized the end of our relationship wasn’t the end of my life; and although odds are I’ll probably suffer heartbreak again, at least I’ve learned how to admit my mistakes, learn from them and stride forward with purpose.

Scream, Aim, Cry
“You did the right thing,” my best friend Jon consoled me following my breakup with Ashley. Since I returned from visiting my family in Michigan over Christmas break, nothing between Ashley and I had felt the same. Our kisses had become dull, and our hugs were weak. She and I agreed over the phone that our passion had faded, and we decided to part ways.

Jon was there as my advisor through the entire ordeal and knew better than anyone the toll the breakup had on me. “It’s better to break things off now than to spend another 10 months at each other’s throats and end up not even being friends,” he reasoned.

I couldn’t deny — he was right in a sense, but that didn’t make me hurt any less. Whereas I once would have shrugged off another girl and moved on to the next while he told me that I was a bad person for tossing her aside, I was the one pining over the loss of love while he patiently insisted that I get myself together

“Easy for you to say,” I told Jon. He’s blissfully been with his girlfriend since last September, and to my knowledge they’ve never had so much of an argument. There was a time when I was as good a boyfriend to Ashley as Jon is to his girlfriend, but that time passed after a situation involving Ashley robbed me of my trust for her, and turned me from her beloved boyfriend into her overbearing keeper.

I Write Tragedies and Perform Sins
I was an early bloomer who has been interested in girls since preschool. While the rest of my boy classmates ran away from the girls, screaming about cooties, I ran toward them hoping to get in a game of doctor. I kissed a girl for the first time when I was 4, and cried over a girl for the first time when I was 8, and twice since. As I grew older, I realized that things weren’t that serious, so I got over myself and moved forward, building up the nice fortification of a calloused heart along the way.
“Why do you always have to be so cold?” asked one of my ex-girlfriends after I had issued at her another harsh and thoughtless comment. Back then, I was reeling from a temporary split between Ashley and me. I was more angry than sad, and I couldn’t have cared less about the way anybody felt other than me.

Soon, Ashley and I got back together as I expected we would. The day she and I reunited was only the beginning of the problems my hardened exterior caused us. I was the Berlin Wall – nothing got in, nothing came out.

I’m a very logical thinker, one of those guys who can rationalize anything he feels. I can grasp why I’m angry before I am, why I’m upset when something doesn’t swing in my favor, or why I shouldn’t be jealous. But I can’t help but to trip over the grief of a breakup. Even when I see the train of heartbreak coming, I can’t manage to get off of the d@mn tracks, and that has to be one of the most frustrating things I go through. Obviously I had been in relationships prior to her, but nothing ever hurt me quite as much.

Stranglehold on My Heart
I often find myself choking on my own emotions following a breakup. It’s not the breakup itself that is the issue, though, it’s the leftover emotions and the words left unsaid. I feel like I want to bawl, even though I hate the gut-wrenching feeling of crying. During the day I play my normal role — the loudmouth, brazen, brainiac who doesn’t mind being a bit belligerent to get a point across. But when I’m at home at night, and there’s no one around and nobody to distract me from myself with phone calls and text messages, I just curl into my bed and stare blankly at memories I wish I could relive.

Around my room there are still mementos from my relationship with Ashley: the Sweet 16 bookmark she bought me before we got together last year around my birthday, the box of pictures we’d taken together, notes we’d written to each other and drawings she made for me out of pastels. Looking around my own bedroom, I’d shut my eyes and hold my breath, but when I opened them again, I couldn’t swallow the bulk of my own regret.

Rock Bottom
In retrospect, both Ashley and I know we made the best decision. After all, we had come to the choice together after a long and tearful discussion. When two people love each other but are no longer in love or happy, it’s best for them to part ways. There’s always the possibility that the flame could rekindle, but they could at least go out and explore the rest of what the dating world has to offer. In my case, I must admit though, that there was a considerable amount of healing to be done before I ever saw myself to be truly ready to be happy with another person. Most guys will try to tell you that the day after a breakup they are just fine, but that’s not the case at all. In fact a lot of times guys are damaged just as badly, if not worse than girls during heartbreak, because not only are we romantically shattered, our pride is at an all time low. And if you know anything about guys, pride is our everything.

After my relationship with Ashley ended, I hit rock bottom. My emotions went up, came down and sometimes stayed down there for several days. Planted at rock bottom, all I could really do was stare at the tiny glimmer of light that seemed all but unreachable. Things had gotten so bad that I even asked Jon a few times over a weekend visit to his house if he could still see by looking through my eyes, how deeply I was cut. He always responded with an unwavering yes. My grades slipped, and I just honestly felt like I was going to be stuck in that low place forever.

Fortunately, I have an older brother, Brandon, who’s always been there to help pull me back to my feet (even if he had to slap me around first). Brandon is my role model and the one person I admire more than anyone else. I texted him one day about how I felt, and considering that he had just went through a breakup too, he told me that the only reason I felt so horrible was because I wanted to feel that way.
“When you want to stop feeling bad, you’ll feel better,” he told me. And even though it’s hard to believe, once I decided that I didn’t want to feel like gum stuck to the bottom of a shoe anymore, I didn’t.

At rock bottom, rediscovery is the ultimate goal. To come up from that place, I’ve had to be truthful and honest with myself. My father has always taught me that the maturity of a man was measured by his accountability for his actions. I knew, for instance, that it was my fault that Ashley and I split even though most of the time we were together I blamed everything on her. I lost trust in her because I didn’t trust myself, and my feelings for her waned because I knew that I wasn’t making her as happy as I once had. In many breakups, neither person is specifically at fault. I think both should take time to examine themselves from the inside out and learn precisely what it is that they want out of a partner and what they can offer of themselves.

Moving On
The most important thing teens have to remember is that our relationships are not the end-all-be-all. I’ve realized that we may call our breakups failures because we didn’t find a partner for life, but I mean, honestly, who’s planning on marrying the person they date in high school, even if many of us seem to find amusement in entertaining that fantasy? In reality, breakups can be successes if they help us learn more about ourselves and what we want out of our soul mate. In my opinion, the only kind of failed relationship a teenager could have is one in which he or she repeated the same mistakes and didn’t learn even an ounce from past experience.

There isn’t a doubt in my heart that I would relish the opportunity to show Ashley that I can change and that I can be the boyfriend that I once was and even better. But if she never gives me another chance, at least I’ve learned enough so I will not repeat myself in my future relationships.

Brok, 17, is a junior at Westlake High who enjoys PWNing Noobs whenever possible.
* Name changed.