If you haven’t listened to Sam Hunt’s song “Break Up In A Small Town” I strongly recommend you do. And if it isn’t your type of music, at least read the lyrics. They paint a picture that so many of us are all too familiar with.
At home I have a couple “old flings”. There’s an old boyfriend here, a romantic partner there, there is someone I was emotionally drawn to, and a boy I am going to marry but I’ve never really talked to. A relationship’s length and involvement don’t matter to me. Whether things are platonic, romantic, or emotional, I’ve always had a hard time ending relationships. I hate letting people go. And let me tell you, it makes it twice as hard when you break up in a small town. There is a neighborhood exactly four minutes down the road from where I live which two or three of these “old flings” live in, along with my current boyfriend. (For a while there was a rumor that I only liked boys from that neighborhood. Again, its tough loving in a small town.) And guess what? Out of all the colleges in the world, I even ended up attending the same school as an old boyfriend of mine. Needless to say, I live in a small little town and I go to a very small school, so when I heard this song for the first time I immediately looked it up and listened to it again and again.
(For social graces and privacy issues, I will use “he” as a blanket pronoun. All of these “old flings” will be referred to as "he".)
He is everywhere. And that made it so hard for me to get over him. For a while I thought the universe was telling me something, that I was meant to get back together with one of these handsome guys, or at least try. But no, I realized proximity means nothing to relationships, because if that was the case, my love life would be a mess. It wasn’t long after things ended with each these gentlemen, that I found out what girls they were trying to rebound with. I felt an awkward guilt come over me as I was driving past their houses to go visit my current boyfriend. I get nervous going to a certain restaurant, wondering if he has the breakfast shift this weekend. I ran cross country with two of these guy’s brothers. I showed up to a party one night and he was walking out the door, so all we exchanged that night was a “hello”. He was in all of my classes senior year. He still used his ex-girlfriend’s locker which was right near mine. I served his parents at the restaurant I used to work at every Friday night. I see his car at a coffee shop and wonder if he's in there flirting with the worker he broke my heart and trust with while we were dating (and as you can imagine, I opt for the drive-thru). His mom was the first person I saw on Thanksgiving break, when I walked into the crowded grocery store. And again, this followed me to school!
Not only is “he” everywhere, but pieces of him and us are everywhere. The stoplight that turned red and gave him an opportunity to kiss me is still hanging there, and it stops me daily. When other people order a chocolate milkshake at the Tasty Swirl, I think of him. I still wear that low cut shirt he liked. I still go to the park that I’ve gone to with each of these guys, because with the past aside, its a really nice park. You see, when you end a relationship in a small town, you don’t just lose a person. You lose your comfort. You wonder if he’s going to be where you’re going. You lose your privacy, because everybody knows everything about everyone, especially when things go south. And you might think I’m sounding a little dramatic, after all, these were just high school flames. But its all I know. And its what I deal with at school. And its what I come home to.
I am finally over “him” regardless of still seeing him everywhere. Going to breakfast on the weekends is no big deal anymore, and the shirt is just a shirt, unless I really think about it. I feel a sense of not arrogance, but empowerment driving through the neighborhood to go to my boyfriend's house. Things happen. It is our job to learn from our past, and I will say, it hurts but it helps when my past has a way of constantly staring me in the face. Sam Hunt says “you gotta move or move on when you break up in a small town” and I guess moving to college wasn’t enough. So I’ve moved on.
