My favorite country song is probably Rascal Flatts’ God Blessed the Broken Road. I’ll tell you why. It’s a love song sung by anyone who sings it – Gary LeVox (lead singer of Rascal Flatts), some drunken person during Open Mic Night at some karaoke place, and even by lovelorn me – about a love that was found after all the near-misses in life.
I set out on a narrow way, many years ago, sings LeVox in the opening line. Hoping I would find true love along the broken road. Then he continues, I set out a time or two. Wiped my brow, kept pushing through. I couldn’t see how every sign pointed straight to you.
(Side note: I sing and listen to this song so much, I wrote those lines by memory. Seriously.)
This is a very sweet verse, but my favorite part of this song is not in it, nor is it the line where the song gets its name from. No, but it is found in the chorus.
Others who broke my heart, they were like Northern stars, pointing on my way into your loving arms…
When I first heard this particular line, it stung me at first. Then, it spoke to me, if only because I knew this is how I’d feel when I found my “one”. That much, I knew would be true. When I’d find my “one,” I’d find my star. And very recently, I thought I did…
Growing up, I was never in any relationships. With that said, I had never been in love. The only kind of love I knew was unrequited. The first heartbreak I’d ever had occurred in the sixth grade, and it certainly wasn’t going to be my last. Unlike most situations concerning heartbreak, it was clear that I hadn’t learned My lesson, since I repeated the same mistake and got the same result (rejection, if you forgot), two years later with a different, older boy, this time from church. Then again with someone who is now one of my closest friends, and the last big heartbreak was served by a guy I never want to see ever again in my life. (Seriously. Fuck you.)
These guys were my biggest heartbreaks because these were the guys I poured my entire soul, energy, and love into. They were my biggest heartbreaks because they were all unrequited. There were minor players here and there along the way, other various Northern stars that didn’t need to be named because they weren’t big enough or bright enough to shine and stand out in my night sky.
After my biggest heartbreak via Voldemort (yeah, you), I learned a big lesson – FINALLY. Fuck all these guys who I gave everything to. If they didn’t want it, then I shan’t be offering it anymore. Voldemort was probably the biggest heartbreak I’d learn from – the brightest shining star in the sky – because even though he was a piece of shit, he really forced me to look at parts of myself that he didn’t like (and that I didn’t like as well, I realized), and love them. To me, if he didn’t like me for what I was, then I wouldn’t make him. I would instead love myself. To me, he was the last Northern star in the sky before I found my “one.”
We met in the middle of September. No, it wasn’t the twenty-first night, nor was Earth, Wind, and Fire there to sing on that night. Nope. But I do remember that night. We had only talked to each other for a day before I decided to meet up with him, and when I did, I felt like I was walking up to a person I knew my whole life but didn’t really know. We had a great conversation, and we talked until the coffee shop we sat in closed. I’d come off a half-day at work and studying for school, but oddly, I wasn’t at all tired at all, talking to him. But when I got home, I didn’t leave thinking he was “the one” just yet. To be completely honest, I drove myself home, telling myself aloud, “He can be just a friend. Nothing more.”
What a fucking lie.
After a few more dates, we found ourselves in another coffee shop on another night – me, working on school assignments, and him, working on stuff for work. We left the coffee shop before they could close on us this time, but found it hard to leave each other. We decided the best way to end our date was to drive to the nearby Target so I could buy some stuff I needed. But once we got there, though, I didn’t want to get out of the car. I wanted to stay inside and talk to him, and I figure that’s what he wanted to do also because we didn’t make the shopping trip.
Instead, we found ourselves just wanting to talk – about anything. I’d found a list of 36 questions to ask a potential romantic partner that apparently “leads to love”, which I found randomly one day and brought up to him. He was intrigued. So, we decided to share our answers with each other, for the sake of getting to know each other better.
It worked. There were so many questions, and our answers were so in-depth, that we spent three hours talking about all of them. We talked for so long, we decided not to stay in the Target parking lot, and to drive – around my neighborhood, around his, everywhere in our town until we got to the last question. By the end of the night, we decided to be exclusive, see where the relationship would go, and sealed it off with a kiss.
I was happy in my relationship with him. He was the perfect boyfriend. This time, the love I gave wasn’t unrequited. It was given back to me. I was in love, but I was afraid to say it – for a few reasons. One of them being that he was going to leave, which he did just a week shy of Christmas. My first Christmas with a boyfriend and we couldn’t even spend it together physically. I was so bummed. But we made it work. Despite his fear of long-distance relationships, we made it work. I swore to myself and to him that I would.
“You know what my favorite Rascal Flatts song is?” I told him on the night before he left.
“What?” he answered as he slowed his car to a stop at the light at the top of the hill. We were near my house at this point. “God Bless…”
“…The Broken Road,” I finished for him. “It’s my favorite and it reminds me of you.”
He didn’t need an explanation. He knew exactly what I meant. He was the loving arms the Northern stars took me home to. We both knew it.
When we got to my house a few minutes later, he stopped the car again and I unbuckled my seatbelt, ready to leave.
“Hey, so I decided…we can try long-distance.”
The smile that formed on my face spread wide. When he’d first mentioned his insecurities with LDR, I was understandably worried he wouldn’t consider it. So, his words were reassuring words. Despite his concerns, we made an effort to make “us” work.
It was a tough job – making it work. The hopeless romantic in me wanted to believe that this is what God, all the stars, everything in the universe was pointing at for me to end my long journey. I was so tired but so happy that I found someone worthy of it. The reality of it, though, was that the weight of the relationship and the responsibility it took to take care of it, wore him out faster than it took for me. I was still going, ready to fill up the tank in our car and continue this journey with my “one”. He decided to take a different road instead.
I’ll skip over the details of the rest of my relationship and our eventual downfall because, well, that’s just for me. Well, not really. If you’re lucky enough (or unlucky, depending on how you see it), you already know the story. If you don’t already know how this ends, you probably do now.
I’m not gonna lie: The breakup fucking hurt. It still hurts. When I really think about it to this day, it hurts less and less, but the pain is still there. Every day, I wake up, check my phone, hope to see a text, and then ignore the pain when I don’t see one. More and more every day, though, I do have to admit that it’s starting to get easier. I’ve been trying to work on myself, work on the parts that I lost when I was in a relationship, and take it as a learning lesson.
Out of all the heartbreaks in my whole lifetime, this one was by far the biggest – even worse than Voldemort. Yes, I know, right? And you know why? It’s because even someone who was as a sweet, caring, kind boyfriend could hurt me so bad. Someone who returned my feelings eventually couldn’t, and I had to learn that it was happened in life, what happened in love. It was a lesson I needed to learn. I needed to learn it in order to know how to take care of myself through this kind of rejection. I needed to see that things just don’t work out, even when you think and believe with your whole life that it could. I needed to learn that, just like Rascal Flatts sings, I’ll soon be part of a grander plan that will come true – and he wasn’t going to be in it. Our story wasn’t meant to be about love. It was about growing, for both him and me.
If you’re reading this (You’re probably not, but better to address you just in case you are), I just want to say that I really did love you. I still do. But I know and understand now why this happened, why it had to happen. I only want nothing but happiness and love for you. Our relationship was sweet and you were great. But this isn’t our path to go down. Our song ended, and I am left with yet another Northern star. But if you’re just a star in the sky, I’m so glad that you were placed in mine. And please don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. I will.
Right now, though, it’s time for me to let go of you and continue on that narrow way, still hoping I’d find true love along the broken road…
Jayneezie Writes 