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Prologue

Why can’t I just get over a breakup the traditional way?

Ice cream and a bitchin’ new hairstyle Taylor Swift on repeat until the tears dry up Maybe a Ryan Gosling movie or there, in between spoonfuls of chocolate-chip cookie dough, I whine, Why can’t every guy be like hiirl and store-bought black dye and bangs chopped with orange-handled scissors has earned it a much-needed break It would be so ry, Johnny Rotten-style Just put on a pair of studded, leather boots and kick over so ed I was…an atte for me

Here’s how h school My sister and I said sayonara to our shit-tastic lives in Nashville and nraphy class my first week in town One that involved a lot of face ti task to someone like me who, at the time, was about as sociable as a Sylvia Plath I just wanted to get the assign as feords as possible

Evan didn’t allow it Looking back, I knohy I appealed to hi If I could travel back to that day, I would lay a hand on his lettermen-jacket-clad arm and tell him broken is where I live I like it here I’ people Not in a creepy serial killer kind of way No, he glowed from the inside, made you not want to disappoint hily

Who was I to let this perfect boy fail?

For a short while, I allowed him to breach my barbed-wire, electrified prison fence and swiot me out of my Doc Martens and into a prom dress A feat that amazes me to this day

Yet even then, despite the safety and stability Evan provided, I’d heard the countdown clock ticking deep in the back ofhu? How many dinners with Evan’s freakishly perfect parents could I sit through before I impaled myself on a fork?

The anso years

Evan saw so in me, and he tried desperately to nurture it It was his way Toward the end, though, I think he stopped lovingso stubbornly daliness I store inside of liness never entirely goes away, though Once certain ih have been iliness is particularly stubborn It comes in the form of an addict mother who used our couch to entertain johns A father whose na hbor’s garbage can My sister, Ginger, was the only reason the ugliness hadn’t killed me

It took Evan two years to realize he’d chosen a lee It irlfriend enuinely loved me, and in the process, I proved tohappy

After I ended things with hiether were everywhere I turned Our favorite duh when I cut class to avoid him His answer to that was to s, the likes of which I’d only experienced the few tiuards down And never in such a huge, intoxicating dose

The worst part of it is that I didn’t just lose Evan I lost ot what it ht I was unfixable before

Now, I’e to look like your average nineteen-year-old girl as I weave through passengers in Dublin Airport Messenger bag slung over my shoulder, I let the unfans written in both the vowel-heavy Irish language and English Ruddy-faced children in soccer jerseys greeting their relatives

I entered Shutterclick Magazine’s photojournalis I’d win first prize--a one- around inpictures is not one of the behind a camera coto fend for e I’ve learned to predict people’s expressions andbefore they transforh, especially in a taciturn city like Chicago, soe is bound to happen When those occurrences take place, I don’t photograph the That moment of honesty when they drop their veneer and react with shock or pity I live for those et their filter in place, there is purity in their reaction Everythingtothis guilt, this ash of failure, but I’h the rubble and find Willa again I’ve lost sight of what she was all about and frankly I’m mad as hell about it

The contest sentfeature A spread wherein readers catch up with the contest winner post vacation and experience Ireland through et back to the place I was in pre-Evan When I didn’t give a fk about everyone’s expectations for od-awful soes away, but I’d at least found a way to stabilize it I used to love those qualities inmechanisms anymore I don’t need anyone to fix me As Simon and Garfunkel said, "I touch no one and no one touches me… I am a rock I am an island"

Coincidentally, I’m also on an island Far away from the painful o I’m just me, here, in this place I’ her lifeless corpse froe she sed against her will I’ll bring her back to life Nothing and no one is going to get infro my first love

The reasonable part of me can eat shit

Aa flight boarding for London I s and follow the signs for baggage claim Ireland is a notoriously hospitable country, and I can already see that truth evident in passersby’s ss They aren’t stilted or aard in their friendliness It’s natural

I allow a glihI’ve had since I broke up with Evan, but enough to allow for the possibility that this tripis fa is tucked safely ina cab directly there to get settled