Memory Bank

Editor’s Note: Everyone knows that it’s dangerous to emerge from a bad relationship and immediately jump headlong into a new one. But that doesn’t stop us from doing it. For some reason we can convince ourselves that the rebound will help cure the heartbreak of the train wreck left behind. This is exactly what happened to Kwalz, as she relates in this wonderful memory about Rilo Kiley’s “Portions for Foxes,” expect that her rebound turned out to be her soulmate. Ahh, ain’t love grand.

I had no business dating my husband when I did. I was coming off a long stretch of crazy with a different guy–and I was feeling pent up and rebellious. But he was up for it, so…

I wanted to go a little wild, but, having always been pretty self-restricted, that didn’t mean a whole lot. I spent the first few months picking fights with him just to see how much he could take. I had just finished taking all I could take, so I figured it was my turn to run someone through the ringer.

I can only explain it as when you know you’re being deliciously unfair and extravagantly indulgent in your own point of view. It’s an impatient recklessness, a desire to stir up shit and then charm your way out of it. And I had never done that before. I felt damaged, and so I did my best to act like I was.

When I heard this song, I felt like he would get it– the lyrics embodied it “Being around you offers me another form of relief. When the loneliness leads to bad dreams, and the bad dreams lead me to calling you and I call you and say ‘Come here!’”.

I don’t know that he did get it, but he did get where I was coming from. And he was patient and apparently saw something in me. I got over it by Christmas, and the song is like an old friend who reminds me of the path I tried very hard to go down.

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