15 songs to get you through a breakup

From a manic depressive queer

Graphics by Ally Lardner.

I struggle to write this blog every time I sit down to do it. I mean, the whole point of writing this is to give you a soundtrack for getting over a breakup, and my dating history is admittedly limited. If you don’t wanna hear about that — fuck it. Hit shuffle on that playlist, you don’t need a blog to tell you breakups suck. Before I tell you how to get over a breakup, I’d like to reflect on a relationship that is a decade old.

As a queer millennial growing up in suburbia during the late 2000s/early 2010s, there weren’t a lot of dating options. My straight classmates had their first kisses, their first dates to the dance, their first times going to third base; while I was left behind.

Being single in my teens allowed me to explore myself as a person, which helped me develop a strong sense of self; however, I was blissfully unaware of all of the mistakes I should have been making.

Straight people get to make all their mistakes in their teens. Queer people have to make those mistakes in their 20s, leaving us emotionally stunted, without the tools to navigate conflict, love, and sex.

I started dating my first boyfriend within a month of meeting him during my freshman year of college. There was a lot of sweet naivety in the relationship — we were each other’s first boyfriends, so we finally got our own firsts. We had our first kiss as he left to get on his bus home. It was bad, but in a charming way. The movies make you think you’re supposed to feel fireworks, when sometimes you just feel lips awkwardly smushed together in a hasty rush to get it over with. (We got better at kissing, I promise).

Everything kind of felt that way at the time — exciting, scary and naive, that is. Scary to be holding a boy’s hand in public, but exciting, because someone actually liked me? It was a foreign and uncomfortable feeling. 

After dating through our junior year — an eternity in gay dating — we broke up. We had both known it was over for a while but didn’t have those years of teenage mistakes that taught us to know when it was time to walk away from a relationship.

There’s a world in which we could have cordially walked away from each other, but I think we became so used to the comfort of being in each other’s lives that we were scared to abandon that comfort.

I was so unhappy that I sat down with him to give him an ultimatum that I never spoke out loud. I wrote a list of the things I needed for the relationship to work, and if he couldn’t give me those things we had to be over. I remember my voice and my hands shaking as I read off my litany of grievances to him, us awkwardly crammed in a dorm room where he was an RA. He came to the conclusion that we should take a break. I broke down and decided we were broken up.

So here’s where it gets fun. It feels embarrassing to acknowledge how upset I was after my first breakup; I tried so hard to not feel like a victim of my own ignorance. With my bipolar disorder undiagnosed at the time,  I would fluctuate between wanting to get back together with him and wanting never to see him again. I would feel anxious the entire time I was on campus— scared that I would see him while I was going to a media studies class, waiting for a bus, or eating in the union, awkwardly chewing a mouthful of bagel.

My mania fought me like a freight train, my depression numbed me like novocaine. I was on fire and frozen. A queer full of contradictions — none of them healthy.

But more than anything, I was so frustrated with myself. I wasted so much time pining over someone else, trying to figure out how to make him love me more, while I was neglecting my own needs. Where was that self-assured queer person I had manifested in myself during my teens? When did I become so codependent and pathetic?

So I blocked out every nice memory we had together and blocked him on Facebook. I know this is aging me, but every time I checked the most popular social media app at the time — his face was the first thing to pop up. Want to send a message to a friend? There he was. Want to share a meme? There he was. Want to mindlessly scroll through my phone while I was on the bus? There he fucking was. I had to black him out entirely to move on, which also meant blacking out all the good things in the relationship. All of that sweetness turned to rage.

So I burned love letters and deleted playlists we made for each other. I was intertwined with my trauma by insisting it wasn’t even there. I mean — I didn’t have to grieve something if I was glad it was dead.

For several months, I only listened to breakup music. Unhinged women, and self-indulgent sadness. 

The playlist I made today isn’t the playlist I listened to at the time, although some of the songs are the same. There are still manic highs and depressing lows — but with age and experience, I’ve learned how to cope with breakups better.

Getting ghosted by a Tinder date or a Grindr hookup? Great, I’ve learned how to move on. Dating a boy who is more into me than I’m into him? Fantastic, I’ve learned how to let him down gently. Recognizing when a pretentious musician starts to talk condescendingly to me like my exes spoke to me? Fuck that shit, I’m leaving — I’ve been here before, I recognize that mistake of a man. I’m gone.

This playlist also includes some songs that personify how to cope. How to not spiral after every little bittersweet betrayal and hopeless heartbreak. I hope this playlist helps you the way it helps me as a bipolar person in the dating world — by feeling everything. Feel the anger, the depression, the mania — sometimes all at once. Feel your emotions so you can move the fuck on.