We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.

by Samantha Irby

Today is Zac’s forty-third birthday. We met on the eve of his thirty-second. That totally blows my mind. Like how can I be this old? How could this have all gone down a decade ago? And how are the scars lurking under the surface of my skin still so easy to find? I remember the first time I ran into him in public after we’d broken up: my friend Julia and I were at the Silver Room block party, withering under the blistering July sun, when I heard a familiar laugh behind me and my stomach fell right out of my butt. I turned around and made eye contact, then immediately started to cry, but all cool-like behind giant sunglasses. It felt like all the wind had been sucked out of my lungs, an acute pain that I could feel radiating through my whole body. I clutched Julia’s arm, tears streaming down my cheeks, and was like, “Yo, I gotta go. Right now.” And then we pushed our way through the crowd of sweaty, gyrating bodies to get a cab home. It had been, I don’t know, six or seven months? And I thought I was fine after we broke up. I didn’t fall apart like I thought I would. But when I saw him again something cracked open inside me, and I went home to my new apartment (this time just one room, big enough for a full-size bed, a bookcase, a kitchen big enough to wedge a little writing desk under the window, and a bathroom the size of a closet, perfect for the three boxes I’d moved in with) and called a friend to say that I thought I might be dying for real and played Portishead record...