When I was 24 years old and my guitar player, boyfriend, who I was irrationally in love

with came home from tour.

To inform me, I had been replaced with a girl he met that weekend in Seattle.

It was like someone had taken a meat tenderizer to me.

The story I had told myself is that if such a cool handsome guy wanted to be with me,

it must mean that I'm lovable.

It must mean that I have purpose and a future that I'm desirable and worth something.

These attributes were conferred to me through the relationship.

And so when I was replaced, it felt like they were transferred to someone else.

Or that's what I told myself.

So when I cried my 24 year old self to sleep, thinking my worth and loveability and purpose

had left with the guitar player, I had no idea that the story was still being written.

I did not know that in the fall of 2016, when I was 47 years old, that I would be on

an airplane bound for Boston with a man I had been dating for six weeks, and that he

would lean over, kiss my cheek and softly ask, Nadia, when did you forgive me?

And I would answer, when I realized that so much of my suffering from our breakup was

a result not of your actions, but of the story I was telling myself about your actions.

The guitar player is still handsome, but he doesn't play much anymore.

He's a single dad and a software engineer and a magnificent human.

He is as much of a different person now as I am, and we are happily in love again.

And even so, who knows how this chapter might end?

All of that is to say, we tell ourselves stories about who we are and what we deserve and

...