The distance made us think of other ways to stay together. We swept ourselves into the business of wasting our lives on instant messenger and waiting for the random trips he took to see me. After his last visit he went home and life returned to the same routine. But this time, while he was gone, he had received a gift from his mother: a guitar. He began to throw himself into the songs. Constantly playing me what he had learned, getting me to believe that the songs were for me.

The very first song that he learned was a Death Cab for Cutie song, “Title and Registration.” I guess the chords were just easy for him to learn, but it became the theme song to that period of our relationship. I didn’t know then that it was so appropriate, and I often wonder why I didn’t catch myself looking at the lyrics. He would sign on to instant messenger every day and invite me to hear him strum the same chords over and over again, searing the song into my brain.

Two months went by and he was still playing that song. Yes, he had learned other ones. But this one was the first and the one he played best. Soon our phone calls consisted of nothing but him playing his guitar on the other end and not wanting to talk about what was going on with us. The music drowned out my voice. Then one day I gave up and he didn’t try to stop me. The three years that I had spent getting to know him began to drift away and I was devastated. I could no longer sit at my computer and listen to the songs that he had made ours. Music in general reminded me of him and I stayed away from all kinds of music for months, trying to forget how much he had meant to me. After convincing myself that I was over the breakup, I put my iTunes on shuffle and began trying to regain my love for music.

And there it was. The song that he had played for me. I listened to it, drowning myself in the familiar chords that I had begun to loathe. All of a sudden the lyrics rang out to me, the chorus pounding itself into my head. Why I had not heard it before? Why didn’t I look up the lyrics to the song when we were together? It could have been a sign of what was ahead. Maybe, just maybe, I would have known what to do and he would still be in love with me. But no, the song hadn’t come as a warning. It was now a tortured reminder of our love and how it was over. And the only way to escape it was to delete it - it was the closest I could come to deleting him from my memory.

Sometimes I wanted to believe that it was just lust that drew me to him. That I didn’t fall deeply and intensely in love with him. That in the end all I wanted was his body and not his soul. But I was wrong. Every inch of me was wrong and I wished that deleting the song could have helped me get rid of him, but it didn’t. Hearing the song still throws me into a nervous fit and makes me wish I could break his guitar in half. If only he had chosen another song. If only he had chosen another girl.