Emotional Trauma

Last week, the relationship between me and my ex-girlfriend imploded. We had broken up a month before, and continued a sometimes-difficult but always rewarding friendship. Until she stopped emailing me for a week (we go to different colleges). When we finally talked, I exploded at her unexplained silence, and the resulting conversation ended with us deciding not to communicate with each other for a couple weeks, until we see each other in person at home during Spring Break.

Hurt, angry, feeling unloved and unnecessary, I had to go to my Astro lab, across campus. During that long walk I listened to The Besnard Lakes' "Because Tonight," feeling more alive and present and rooted in the world than I had for a long time. I was aware of myself because that self had been flayed, but that awareness itself, in the anguish and frustration, was such a powerful and beautiful thing, available only at heights of emotional trauma and rapture.



suffering a relationship breakdown with my ex-girlfriend and walking through the cold to astro lab while listening to the besnard lakes' "because tonight": *****