In the spring of 2004 my husband left me. That, however, is only the preface, not the event that ruined my song.

Newly dumped after a decade of marriage, I was thirty years old, miserable, heart-broken, working as a bartender at a crappy Mexican restaurant, and positive that I was going to suffocate from the lead weight hanging from my internal organs. I managed to get through each day without ever really making eye contact with anyone. I found out what hell looks like: it has brightly colored vinyl tablecloths covered in salsa stains, and eleven fiesta songs looping for all eternity.

Then this boy – this big, tall, sweet, totally hot, eight-years-younger-than-me boy who worked as a server at the restaurant – asked why I seemed so sad. His name was Brian. He said I looked like I could use a drink, and that he would be happy to go to the little bar across the street and buy me one or two after we got off work. Nothing in the world sounded better to me at that moment than shots of tequila. I decided to take him up on his offer, and indeed, the tequila was just what the doctor ordered. The attention of an attractive young guy didn’t hurt either.

After another half dozen outings like that, I slept with him. It was as if a giant band-aid had been placed over my broken heart. My friends said they understood the inclination to sleep with a young hottie, of course. Go ahead, they said, get over the ex-husband. But by all means, don’t fall in love with him. I should have listened.

Brian and I spent all our time together, going to the gym, working at the restaurant, hanging with his friends (who didn’t seem nearly as mature as he did, even though they were all the same tender age), and going to concerts. One night we went to see the Used play in San Francisco at the Warfield. During a very private moment in the middle of hundreds of screaming fans, four feet from a giant mosh pit, we looked at each other while singing along to “I Caught Fire.” From then on it was our song.

At the time, Brian was learning how to play the guitar. He was terrible and could only play “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” but somehow he figured out the opening riff of our song and played it over and over. I thought it was charming that he would serenade me with an emo song. “I Caught Fire” was an ubiquitous part of our lives – we even made it our ring tones for each other.

I spent months trying not to fall in love with Brian. Then one night he was mugged outside a bar downtown. His attacker shot him in the back and in the leg, left him for dead in the street. His best friend came over at five in the morning to tell me that I needed to come to the hospital right away. I rushed to the ER and found him in the trauma center. He was crying, telling me that as he lay in the street, he had thought he would never see me again. He didn’t want to die without telling me how much he loved me.

It was the most morbid and romantic thing I had ever heard, and we professed our undying love amidst the tubes and drying body fluids. After four days in the ICU, Brian was released to my care and moved in with me. I took him home and spent the next few months nursing him back to health, doing all the laundry, cooking, cleaning, paying all the bills, even bathing him.

Once he was in a position to care for himself again, Brian decided loving and living with an older woman was something that just wasn’t for him. He said he still loved me, but – wait for it – he wasn’t “in love” with me. My band-aid was ripped off, leaving a different wound all together. If I thought being left by my husband was painful, the heartbreak of the ill-advised, May-December, rebound relationship humiliated me beyond measure.

It has been two years since then. I have found healthier ways than tequila and young hotties to help heal my wounds, but every time I hear “I Caught Fire” by the Used, my stitches come out a little.