My Valentine's Day gift to you. Thank me later.

One of my very favorite blogs is Elyse Sewell's LiveJournal. Elyse Sewell came in third on the first season of America's Next Top Model, a show we all know I love to love and just refuse to stop watching no matter how jacked it gets. She applied to the show as a fluke and was actually en route to medical school at the time, a veritable smartypants. She's become arguably the most successful model to have come out of that show, which doesn't say much — success post–ANTM basically consists of former contestants showing up at Tyra-affiliated events in unflattering sateen slipdresses and blotchy skin, and those who don't. But a small handful of the hamsters do manage to get some legitimate work, and Elyse has forged her own extremely successful career. She wisely detached herself from the ANTM brand and has traveled the world, getting signed to agencies and, as she calls it, ladyposing all over Asia and elsewhere.

I love her blog because a) she's an amazing writer with a vocabulary I covet; b) she's an extremely talented photographer in her own right, so much so that I bought the same camera she used, and her blog is probably the number one inspiration for why I take so many random photos, especially of food; c) despite all appearances to the contrary because she's naturally so thin, she will eat absolutely anything, including street meat in Cambodia; d) she's fiercely independent and that makes her travels, which she writes about extensively, that much more interesting (the blog is mainly about her travels and the hilarious and beautiful things she sees wherever she may land; the modeling is secondary); e) she's self-deprecating and doesn't take modeling too seriously, while always acknowledging that it's given her great fortune; f) she has a killer sense of humor. People read her blog who have never seen her on TV; they found it because it's really, really good. She got a book published because of it. She's just cool and I want her to be my friend. She's also a fucking great model, very easy with her body.

Confession: Sometimes I take a bazillion pictures of myself so I can "find my angles," i.e., the best way to hold my face so I'm not chinny. And then I delete them, unless I've found my angles. Those I keep. It's sometimes the only way I can really see myself.

Anyway. Elyse, for many years, was dating Marty Crandall, the keyboardist for The Shins. This love affair began before either of them was famous. They seemed blissfully, to the public at least, happy. But you never know what goes on behind closed doors, and during the holidays this winter, it came out that he beat the crap out of her, and not for the first time. After much ugliness, she left him. Right now, she's recovering at her parents' house, mourning her relationship, nursing her wounds, enduring all the emotional shit you have to suffer when you break up with the love of your life, having to reconcile the hard truth that the love of your life can remain that person even if they hit you. It's horrible.

This weekend was lousy for her, so she posted on her LiveJournal, calling for readers to share their worst breakup stories to help her feel better. And oy vey, last night I sat up for hours reading these comments, story after story of the horrible, nonsensical and simply sadistic things people do to each other. I was transfixed. Not only is it a recording of (often way beyond) borderline sociopathy, but it's also a testament to survival. As one reader put it, pain is just a thing, it's not you. Most of these readers went through the most insane drama and have come out clean on the other side, which is so reassuring. Read the crazy shizz here.

It, of course, got me thinking about my own romantic past. I can thankfully say I've never had a body-paralyzing, appetite-killing, heaving-crying, danger-flirting, cessation-of-functioning heartbreak. On the contrary, most of my relationships (which I tend to call entanglements, as few could hardly be classified as true romances) nearly always went one of two ways:

1. The guy would pursue me, pursue me, pursue me, and when I gave the thumbs-up to move forward, all of a sudden they'd slink back, give me the whole "I don't know what I want" rigamarole, the entanglement would fizzle until there was nothing left after I'd driven myself crazy to make it work, and then we'd have the most lackluster breakup ever;

or

2. It would be a Friends With Benefits situation in which I would always, always, always get attached.

There were two exceptions, both from high school: The most traumatic breakup happened when my boyfriend dumped me completely unexpectedly on our two-month anniversary after he took me out to celebrate. I truly did not see it coming and was distraught. I later heard his next girlfriend gave him herpes, so that was kind of awesome. (Truth be told, we stayed friends for a while. No hard feelings. That was a long, long time ago. The herpes thing was just a rumor — one I chose to believe at the time because, again, at the time, awesome.) The other breakup followed a really nice six-ish-month relationship, an actual boyfriend/girlfriend deal, but it fizzled sadly but naturally. The breakup was very fair, very civil, we're still friends. So that feels good.

On the flip side, Josh dated a woman for more than six years. When I met him, I was hugely intimidated by this relationship because he'd parterned with someone he thought he was going to marry, and that whole concept was so outside of my realm of experience. On the other hand, he was hugely intimidated by the fact that, during the time he was exclusive with his ex, I was trolling the streets of America, being a giant ho. I didn't sleep around, but I did, um, bond with a lot of boys, mistaking one kind of attention for another. He once asked me how many boys, I refused to tell him, the conversation spiraled into me telling him, and him freaking out.

ME: Honey, we had completely different experiences in college. During those years, you were off the market. You were committed. I wasn't. I was looking for commitment by kissing these boys.
JOSH: !!!!! I can't believe ... !!!!!!!!!
ME: Sweetheart, please understand: I went to a Big 10 school. You were in love. A Big 10 school can't compete with that.
JOSH: But ... eh ... uh ... !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ME: Big 10! Please understand!

I have this fear, even though I'm happily married, that because I haven't had that destructive heartbreak yet, it is eventually going to happen, and until it does, I have no right to advise other people through their breakups because I cannot relate to them. This is not to say I don't understand heartbreak: In most functional relationships, you can still have your heart broken, you can still do unforgettable, unforgivable things to each other and eventually move past them and learn from them, still keeping them in mind as you move forward. I never take Josh and my luck at having met him for granted — I think this is all part and parcel of having been so single for so long; I was virtually single even when I was paired up — so I have this nagging paranoia that the forces of evil could intervene and it could be over at any time and I couldn't possibly survive that kind of pain. I have no reason to believe this will happen, and there are no signs pointing in that direction, I just have fear that it will, simply because it's never happened to me before. (Please keep in mind I also have an unreasonable fear of being set up for a crime I didn't commit and landing in prison. So take all this for what it's worth. Also, I'm terrified of express elevators.) And yes, this drives Josh bats. He thinks I'm a freak. I'm even nervous to post this, as if it's tempting fate; I'm going to let it sit for a while. It would be nice if I could turn the whole it-will-happen-because-it-never-has-before into a positive omen, thinking it's a reason I'll eventually win the lottery or become a size 6 or someone will magically appear on my doorstep to decorate my apartment free of charge or my apparently crack-addled kittens will let me sleep past 7 a.m.

People have a tremendous capacity for navigating trauma. A breakup can feel like a death. It rewires how you feel when you wake up in the morning. I read what Elyse is going through and can't imagine her pain, and I read the hundreds of comments that followed her post and wonder how all those people, male and female, gay and straight, lived through the stalkers and cheaters and liars and beaters. But they did. And she will. And I hope that, if god forbid I ever had to, I could too, that I would have the same strength I admire in these strangers. But for now — and I'm banking on for always — I have the fortune of being able to tell Josh I love him, and he'll say it back, and then I'm free to go take more pictures of myself so I can see what gratitude looks like.