It was a typical Saturday morning and I was waking up groggy due to activities the night before. My roommate was out of town, so I decided to sleep over at my friend’s dorm. As I came to consciousness, I vaguely heard crying and I looked up to find my friend missing from her bed. Then I heard it – the irrational musings of an intoxicated boyfriend. Oy vey, I thought to myself as I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep – I was never one for involved relationships. But, as I tried to lull myself back to sleep, I heard giggling, then crying, and then a slamming door. My friend somberly walked into the bedroom, eyes sunken and red. “We broke up,” she sobbed.

Twelve hours before, these two were the picture of a fruitful and happy college relationship. She had no idea what had gone wrong and I knew zero back-story to try to help her figure it all out. She began to explain that he stopped by in the wee hours of the morning with dire information. That impromptu meet up quickly turned into an argument as, out of nowhere, he began to insult her, pointing out the setbacks she had endured due to her insecurities. I was caught off guard by how utterly irrational the situation was. She was understandably freaking out, wondering what had gone so terribly wrong in that short amount of time. She had nowhere to start looking for an answer and was grasping at straws attempting to make sense of the whole thing. They talked (and yelled and cried…) into the late morning and he stormed off, calling off the relationship. As I began to grapple with this information and the insanity of her usually rational boyfriend, we heard a knock at the front door. My friend answered and he came in, apparently he had forgotten one more argument.

From her room, I heard the pattern again – crying then giggling then affection. However, yet again, he broke up with her, stormed out, and my friend was left in tears (again). I began to explain to her that she clearly deserves better than an insane boyfriend and that he should probably be immediately referred to a clinic. She tried to justify the issue and wondered if he had a reasonable basis to break up with her on such random and illogical terms. Then we heard it again, the third and final knock at our front door. By this time, the early afternoon sun was cast into the living room as I scurried out to open the door. He stared at me with an expression as though I were a stranger with an arm coming out of my forehead. He walked in and gave a heartfelt apology to the (ex?)girlfriend he had managed to break up with three times in the past twelve hours and then asked what day of the week it was.

My friend took a step back, “It’s Saturday… you came over last night…” and came to the horrifying conclusion that he had no memory of the last 12 hours. He had apparently forgotten everything up until that point. He remembered none of the fighting, none of the break ups, and none of his multiple returns. As he recounted his day, he suddenly sat up straight – he had mixed margaritas at dinner with one of his new allergy medicines. In one brief realization, all her questions were answered. She had sent herself into a mad fury for no reason.

My friend was too hard on herself. She immediately jumped to conclusions about herself based on an experience that was actually groundless. She went through twelve ungodly hours to reach the conclusion that she was better off letting him sleep of a chemical imbalance on her couch than trying to rationalize. Her self psychoanalyzation, looking back to the genesis of their relationship and analyzing everything that could have gone wrong, was voluntary torture. People tend to get worked up about things that, in the end, are entirely explainable. As we wait for answers, we panic and stress ourselves out. We’re all guilty. We live in an “all’s well that ends well” kind of world, and until we accept that not everything that happens to us is in our control, and most of the time happens for a reason, we will accumulate more wrinkles and a higher blood pressure than necessary before we’re 40.