“WHAT’S THE ISSUE,” he asks impatiently.

I’m rolled over on my side, facing away from him on the bed.

“I know something’s wrong. You’re playing depressing music again.”

I squeeze my eyes shut and don’t respond.

From the kitchen I can hear Mark Kozelek’s heavy-hearted croon. “Sorry that I could never love you back.”

He’s right. I am playing depressing music, and maybe there is something wrong, but for once I actually don’t feel like talking about it.

“I always play depressing music,” I say.

And it’s mostly true. Given the choice between Dylan circa Freewheelin’ and Blood On The Tracks, I’ll always choose the latter. I like to think it’s a nod to my appreciation for the cinematic, to the way music turns life’s dull moments into something infinitely more interesting. He thinks it’s because I’m dramatic. Tonight, we agree to disagree.

IT’S REALLY NOT my fault. I learned sonic heartbreak early on. I was five years old when I first heard Todd Rundgren’s pleading ballad, “Be Nice to Me.” My father would throw the “Best Of” vinyl onto the record player in the basement of my childhood home. We’d dance, him recounting Rundgren’s history of heartache, me staring at him with what I assume was a look of utter confusion. I had no idea what Rundgren was talking about when he sang, “No catch/ No strings/None of the usual things,” but I already knew that whatever it was sounded like a terrible idea.

Turns out my instincts towards relationships were better at five than they are 24, but that’s just how it goes. Time passes and we get worn down. After hearing about love, butterflies and what a wonderful fucking world it is enough times, you kinda start to buy it.

In the end, the boy and I broke up. I found myself half-surprised that it really wasn’t anything like the movies would have you believe. Contrary to how I had envisioned our inevitable split, there was no one there to hit play on “Here Today, Gone Tomorrow” by the Ramones as I walked out the door, and I did not get a remorseful phone call as “The Scientist” piped in from some unseen speaker. I got nothing but silence, which was sufficiently poignant.

In the weeks after the split, I made my best friend drink whiskey with me and blast Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors so loud that the neighborhood drunk stumbled over thinking we were having a party. We were, in a sense. But like all good parties, you eventually reach a threshold, and I found myself recklessly entering into my phase of pathetic breakup music. As embarrassing as it is to admit, it was all John Mayer and whatever I could find on shitty Nebraska radio. Like a lost soul, I searched for meaning in anything and everything. Taylor Swift was a sage. Daughtry’s vapid lyrics were a treasure trove of untapped wisdom. After a particularly low night, when I found myself nodding in understanding to that Bonnie Raitt song, I emerged from the heavy haze of terrible music and broken hearts. Because really, after so long you just kind of have to.

Eventually the boy and I both left Nebraska. I moved to the West Coast and he moved halfway around the world. One night, during a moment of weakness that brought us together before we both went our respective ways, he played me Dylan’s “Isis.” “This reminds me of you,” he told me, while in the background Dylan spun his tale of leaving and eventually returning to his goddess Isis.

“That’s nice,” I said.

Secretly I hated him for turning a beautiful song into a spectre.

I CAN STILL remember the first time I heard John Cusak ask, “What came first, the music or the misery?” It was 2000 and the hyper-self-aware High Fidelity had just been released. I was in my early teens—too young to care and too inexperienced to know better anyway. Sometimes I still think of that classic chicken or the egg conundrum. By all technical accounts it was the misery. I had cried long before I heard my first Leonard Cohen song. But a broken heart tends to teach you things, not the least of which is that you should choose your mate wisely. Because if you’re lucky, it won’t have to end. But if it does? At least you have your music.

Playlist for a Breakup

We’ve compiled this in a zip for all you brokenhearted bastards; download–and weep–at your own discretion.

1. Mark Kozelek- Carry Me Ohio
2. Bob Dylan- You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (off of blood on the tracks)
3. Todd Rundgren- Be Nice To Me
4. The Ramones- Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
5. Coldplay- The Scientist
6. Fleetwood Mac- Dreams
7. John Mayer- Slow Dancing in a Burning Room (ha! So dramatic!)
8. Taylor Swift- You Belong With Me
9. Daughtry- Over You (not too proud!)
10.  Bonnie Raitt- I Can’t Make You Love Me
11.  Bob Dylan- Isis