Shit. I Was a Rebound.

I must have read that line a hundred times.

It was a turbulent Summer 2013. My ex at the time just broke up with me. After doing the most ridiculous thing I did to any ex, I finally received the breakup letter that explained everything. I was her rebound.

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EVEN IN THE BEGINNING, I had clear knowledge that she wasn’t over her ex. The chips were heavily stacked against my favor: they were together for four of her formative years, high school through college. He was considered part of her family, and vice versa. She relied heavily on him for everything from mental therapy to car maintenance.

Then I came into the picture. I saw all the red flags. I sought the counsel of wise friends. To which I said: “This is trouble. I know what I’m getting into. But I’m going to do it anyway.” Delivered with a smirk that only a twenty-something with naive confidence and plenty of runway can have.

At the end of the relationship, there was a weird solace in knowing that I chose to pursue the relationship, regardless of how well it was set up to fail. Sure, I had plenty of hope. But it was my responsibility. She was an experience I wanted to experience and I experienced it.

That doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

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There’s this movie called About Love, which I watched well before the occurrence of this relationship. In one of the vignettes, a boy develops unrequited interest in a girl. But the girl asked the man for a favor: a ride to her ex-boyfriend’s place to get some closure. She comes back from the conversation, seemingly down.

It’s pouring rain as the boy gives the girl a ride back. They enter a long tunnel, giving the pair brief solace from the rain. In this moment, the boy realizes that he too was a tunnel for the girl. The rain represented the emotional turmoil she was processing, and the tunnel was a temporary haven that she would surely have to leave.

I think I was a tunnel too. And I have no regrets. That relationship taught me a ridiculous amount about what I want, don’t want, and importance difference between chemistry and compatibility (hint: it helps to have both). For those who have been following the Breakup Series, I’ve been working towards several unconventional guides, one of them including The Unconventional Guide to Breakups. Subscribe below to be the first to hear about it.

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