Saudade Summer

No llores porque ya se terminó, sonríe porque sucedió.

Translation: Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.

– probably not Gabriel García Márquez

I hate the melodrama of breakups. Why does the end of a relationship feel so much like grieving a death? Why does grieving a death feel so much like dying? Every breakup I’ve ever had has been a gift. This one was no different. I mean, being cheated on hurt extra, but it only reinforced that That Man was not The One.

The difference between being dumped and being the dumper seems to be the speed with which the BandAid is removed. When I’ve ended things, I was already well into my grieving process before they even knew we were breaking up. I got to pick at the edges of the bandage, smoothing it back down when it hurt too much. Being dumped pulls the whole thing off at once.

I think in past breakups though, that sucker was barely hanging on by a thread when one of us gave it the final yoink. This was different. We hadn’t been fighting. There had always been some push and pull. I was all for the slow burn, but less for keeping our relationship a secret. Ultimately, I let him have his private ways though. It was enough for me that he said we’re monogamous. It didn’t matter what the world knew, as long as things were right between him and I. 

I had suggested that he should move to the Bay Area. He’d told me he could transfer to Richmond. I mostly let it go though, when he said the rents were too high for a transfer to make sense. The Bay Area does have infamously high housing costs. Besides, I was content that he’d at least looked into the possibility. I didn’t want to move to San Diego. He showed no interest in living anywhere in between the two. 

At the time of our breakup I’d surrendered though. I was ready to move to San Diego. By the end of my adventures abroad I just wanted to go home, and his arms felt like home in a way no zip code could. I don’t know what went wrong. We met, became friends, and fell in love. We supported each other’s personal growth and comforted each other through hardship. Things seemed to be getting increasingly serious. Then out of nowhere he left me for another woman. I was betrayed and confused. I was devastated. 

Sometime around sixth grade, I began keeping journals almost compulsively. Thoughts, emotions, it’s all hard for me to process without writing it out first. I’d gone to Portugal thinking I would put together a cool series of blog posts about studying abroad in my 40s. I was thinking I’d call it “An Old Broad Studying Abroad” and that shortened to “A Broad Abroad.”

Then being in Portugal became too much like real life and less like a travel brochure, and this thread of our relationship became so deeply interwoven, especially as I contemplated what home really means. I wasn’t just writing the story of what I learned about Portugal, but rather of how while studying in Portugal I’d come to realize that my treasure had been home all along.

Taking the love story out of the travel story seemed impossible. I had notes and pictures and I wanted to share this fun adventure. Instead of looking back fondly, it was so painful to go through those first drafts and outlines. As I was trying to delete our relationship from the narrative, I wondered if she was with him when I was grounded with Covid, or the weekend I went away to Sintra with my class. All of those nights I couldn’t get a hold of my man, was he with her? Did the affair start before he came to visit me at the end of May? Did he know then that it would be our last time together as a couple? 

I could not separate my memories of Portugal from the pain of this betrayal. It made it difficult to take my travel blog notes and make them anything other than a scream. And yet, when I try to express my frustration with him it always seems to come out as a love letter. I alternated back and forth. Trying to write about Portugal from the excited perspective that I had while I was experiencing it, while also journaling through an incredibly painful breakup, while also working closely with, and trying to remain friends with, That Man. 

I gave up on the blog and just tried to type out all of my tears, to journal my way through the hurt and confusion. I couldn’t tell the story of that summer without telling the story of our break up and I couldn’t tell the story of our breakup without telling the story of our relationship.

Here, is where I’m tempted to pretend that I kept it quiet because he’s a private person. Cheating isn’t exactly a good look on Mr. All-American Golden Boy. I’m more honest than that though. I decided to nix the blog at least as much because of my own embarrassment. If I could pretend like it was no big deal, maybe I could save face. I never liked that cootie buttbrain anyway, whatevs.

I had no desire to broadcast to the world that I had fallen head over heels, truly, madly, deeply in love with a man that I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with and that while knowing that he had all that I was and could be, he said, nah. He knew I was completely his, and he didn’t want me anymore. This isn’t exactly something I want to brag about.

The flight home from Portugal was the happiest I had ever been in my life. I was going home to the welcoming arms of the man I loved. I had just successfully invaded the Iberian Peninsula, er, I mean, studied abroad in Europe. Despite all of my challenges and shortcomings I was well on my way to graduating from a university I’d barely had the nerve to apply to. I had no idea what I was going to do after graduation. I mean, I was pretty sure I was gonna move to San Diego, but beyond that anything was possible. 

sau·da·de

/souˈdädə/
noun

a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia that is supposedly characteristic of the Portuguese or Brazilian temperament.

Definition from Oxford Languages 

Of all the souvenirs to take home with me, saudade seems to be the one that clings to me. I miss the tender, trusting person I won’t allow myself to be again. More than that though, I am homesick for a future that never came to fruition.

It’s like there is some alternate universe version of me that got it right, that figured out how to love and be loved, and sometimes I can hear the happy echoes of her life ringing against the hard, hollow chambers of my own. It’s like dreaming that you hid an incredible treasure in your sock drawer, only to wake up to a reality in which you don’t even have a sock drawer, let alone a treasure, but you still have this pressing urge to retrieve the one from the other. This visceral longing not so much for something I can’t have as for something that doesn’t really exist, that’s how I feel saudade.

August started with me feeling invincible. It ended with me feeling like a sea otter who didn’t have anyone to hold her paw, very lost and very alone on a vast sea. The break up had been a gift, because if we had what it takes to make it, we wouldn’t have broken up. The relationship had been a gift too. If only for a little while, we had built something beautiful together. I knew these were both gifts, but that didn’t make it any easier to endure in the moment. No matter how rationally I talked myself through it, it still hurt like hell. I didn’t want to look back, but I was struggling to look forward and I couldn’t stand my present moment at the end of my Portuguese summer. 

Honestly, what will become of me?
Don’t like reality

It’s way too clear to me

But really, life is dandy

We are what we don’t see

We miss everything daydreaming

Flames to dust 

Lovers to friends

Why do all good things come to an end?

-Nelly Furtado
All Good Things (Come to an End)