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I was always up late, constantly with friends, frequently going out, and always stressed about being dirt poor. I used to eat ramen in Julia’s studio apartment at two in the morning and rub her back as she studied. Back then, we’d worked. Back then, neither of us had considered how much things would change in the future.
But they had drastically changed. And we went from that carefree, fun, college couple to a couple that was constantly in conflict. I loved her so much, but love wasn’t enough when you woke up one day and found you were completely incompatible with your partner.
She didn’t have late nights anymore. No, she went to bed early because she went to work early. Staying in, eating Top Ramen, and binge-watching television was no longer enough for her. She had money now, and she wanted to spend it eating at nice restaurants and going to culturally-enriching events I couldn’t afford.
Suddenly the fact that I was a wayward musician waiting for her big break was no longer appealing to her. She stopped seeing me as this fun, adventurous, creative soul and began to view me as unmotivated.
Which I wasn’t at all. I was quite motivated to succeed with my music; I just wasn’t motivated to find any other career paths. I knew my talent, I knew my calling, and it was music. I was going to make music work for me.
But now that Julia was this big corporate badass bringing in tons of money, poor musician was not enough. And while I would’ve liked to be angry at her for this, I really couldn’t be. She didn’t want my lifestyle, that was fine. I couldn’t fault her for growing into someone new. Nor could I fault myself for not being what she wanted.
I stroked the outside of one of my suitcases, one with a velvety edge. Fiddling brought me comfort, and I could use a lot of comfort.
“Do you know where you’re headed yet?” she asked me.
I nodded. “I’ve spoken to an old friend who has an extra room. She’ll let me stay in it while I get back up on my feet.”
“In town?” she asked.
I shook my head. “In Rosebridge.”
“Rosebridge?” she gasped. “But that’s, like, twelve hours away. That’s in a completely different state!”
I looked at her suspiciously. “So?”
“So… you’ll be so far from me.”
I raised an eyebrow. “That’s the point, isn’t it? We aren’t together anymore, Julia. Of course I’m going to be far away from you. I mean, does it even matter? Even if I found a place in town, I might as well be twelve hours away. You’ll never see me anymore.”
She sighed. “I guess that’s true, but… I don’t know. In my head, I imagined you’d still be living in town. Maybe a small part of me was hoping that you’d…” She paused. “That you’d find your way back to me.”
“No,” I corrected her. “You were hoping I’d become someone different. Someone with goals, a plan, someone who would be compatible with your high octane lifestyle.”
She looked down guiltily, because she knew that I was right. She wanted the best of both worlds. She wanted to keep me, and at the same time, she wanted me to be totally different from who I actually was.
“I never asked you to change,” I reminded her.
She nodded. “I know that.”
“Don’t ask this of me, not again. I’m fine breaking up if that needs to be done, but I don’t want to do that. This isn’t what I wanted. So please stop pushing me to try and change, because I’m scared I won’t say no to you. And if I don’t say no to you, I’m going to give up on my dreams for you. I’m going to become someone I’m not.”
And, really, it wasn’t as if my dreams were that unrealistic. I wasn’t one of those naïve twenty-three-year-olds who believed I was going to make it somehow. I didn’t expect to rise to celebrity status or be discovered. I didn’t want fame. I didn’t want to be rich.
I only wanted to make a living with my music. With street performances, making beats for other aspiring musicians, doing live performances, just my guitar and me. I was even open to doing lessons for children in the future, to both teach them what I knew and have a steady stream of income.
So it wasn’t as though I wanted everything to fall into my lap. I just wanted music to be a part of my career. Really, I wanted music to be a part of my entire existence. I wanted to live and breathe music.
No, that would never make me a rich woman, which I fully acknowledged. But I didn’t need to be rich to be happy. I just needed to be a person who could pay her bills. A person who was free to live her life without the constraints of a job that she hated. My end goal was not to make a ton of money, and I was really, truly fine with that.
But Julia never would be. She liked high-end, especially now that she was making a ton of money. She wouldn’t ever be happy with a partner who made a meager living giving guitar lessons to kids.
“I just don’t know what comes next, Kaitlyn,” she said to me softly.
“Next comes both of us moving on with our lives. You finding a person who fits your lifestyle, me finding someone who fits mine. Before that will likely be a lot of heartache, but eventually we’ll both find redemption in someone new.”
She nodded but didn’t say a word. Like me, she knew it to be true, but she didn’t want to allow herself to believe it. She didn’t want to truly believe it was over, because that meant the pain would begin. I felt similarly.
“Why Rosebridge?” she asked, seemingly only because she wasn’t ready for me to leave.
