“Mr. Brightside” is a song I want to love, but every time I listen too closely it brings up a sleepless night from long ago and a sick feeling in my stomach.

Melissa was the story of my whole college career wrapped into one relationship. I was in love in a way that made me believe that nothing would ever replace it: she intoxicated me. She was sweet, smart, funny, beautiful, a little nerdy, and most of all, she loved me. Unquestionably, unflinchingly, and wholeheartedly. We belonged to each other. But there was a dark side to that kind of passion. She couldn’t turn it off. The simplest conflicts became long, drawn out engagements that left me exhausted and battered. You see, when I’m wrong, and have been convinced of it, I apologize quickly and sincerely. I try my best to fix the problem. I’m wired that way- there’s no pride to be found in holding on to wrong conclusions.

But Melissa. She would spend hours getting worked up before, finally, she calmed down and realized it was all right for me to go out to dinner with the guys once in a while. I wasn’t going to strip clubs or chasing tail. I was smoking cigarettes, talking about football and telling dirty jokes. Still, our arguments made me feel like a bastard. She was perfectly willing to act like we were married; I must have been the unreasonable one because I wasn’t ready for that. We had two years of co-dependence and a year of what I called “colliding” before I finally did the right thing and broke it off. It was never a matter of love or falling out of it. I always loved her. But she had become unhinged and self-destructive, and I felt like the cause. She needed to find an identity that didn’t revolve around “us,” and if I continued to hover in the background of her life – all the while fully aware that I could never marry her – we would never be able to get on with the rest of our lives. And she would never get better. It wasn’t fair to me, and it wasn’t fair to her.

She didn’t take it well. She told everyone I abandoned her, and maybe she was right. She sent me one last “Chris is such an asshole” letter and I let it go. My whole life was ahead of me, and there was no sense in spending it tied to someone who steadily drove me crazy. We’d wind up being those people who left every dinner party arguing, whose neighbors couldn’t stand because they were always shouting at each other.

About six months after the final blowup, I came back to town to see my friend Nick’s band play. Melissa was also a friend of Nick’s – peripherally, at least. Nick invited everyone he’d ever met to his shows, and she always enjoyed them, so she went. Naturally. We said hi to each other, nothing more. But I was acutely aware of her, as if I could feel on my skin where she was in the room. I tried to watch the show, but that became impossible because she began flirting with some guy, and then she began making out with him. I could tell she was aware of me, and I knew she wanted to hurt me for hurting her. And despite myself, I was letting her. She was in my past – I was dating someone else, right? I had been the one to let go, so what right did I have to be upset? All the reason in the world couldn’t turn aside the queasy, knotted feeling I had in my chest. My ears got hot and my throat got tight. And I felt rather stupid for it. What made it even worse was the way my friends reacted; everyone kept glancing over at me with looks of concerned pity, as if someone was in the back of the room torturing my dog. My idiotic jealousy: validated.

That night I went back to my sister’s apartment and tried to sleep. I spent the whole night visualizing – alternating nightmares and waking visions of what might be going on at that very moment between some random guy and the girl I still loved. One of the down sides of an active imagination is that it’s impossible to shut it off when something scary comes along. Even after a twelve-pack of beer.

Three years later I bought Hot Fuss and discovered “Mr. Brightside.” At first blush, I loved the song, but then one day I was driving home from work and “Mr. Brightside” came on. I was singing along, and suddenly the lyrics clicked into place: Now I’m falling asleep / And she’s calling a cab / While he’s having a smoke / And she’s taking a drag / Now they’re going to bed / And my stomach is sick / And it’s all in my head / But she’s touching his chest now / He takes off her dress now / Let me go… I nearly swerved off the road. I remembered that night. I remembered it so vividly that my gut twisted. I felt like puking.

Now I can’t listen to that song at all. It still makes me sick to my stomach. I remember all the rationalizations I made to make the jealousy, the unwarranted feeling of betrayal disappear. I remember feeling angry at myself for being so stupid and irrational in the first place. Now I realize that, all these years later, even if she’d given up most of her anger, the memory was still able to hurt me. And I wonder sometimes if I deserved it.