There are, of course, different kinds of heartbreak. Quick snaps like a finger being broken in a mob movie. The pendulum swing of back and forth love that results in alternating feelings of heart pain and elation. The devastating thud followed by ease and relief, knowing you’ve kicked the habit, something bad for you. And then the slow ache of watching your love, maybe your first love, become a fragment, a shard, a sliver of who you fell in love with, the realization that you can only love your past love, that it’s a memory, that you can’t find that love place again because it’s changed, transformed, like into the movie Transformers because that’s how bad it is.

Adam Sandler was my first pin up. I didn’t have pop stars on my walls. I had this goofy heeb who laughed at his own jokes. We had Saturday night dates. Or Sunday morning’s with the VCR. He wasn’t a huge movie star. He was a dork in GAP denim, a red-hooded sweatshirt, a ridiculous wig. And even when he became a big movie star, when he had to go back to school, when he picked up a golf club, when he was a freakin’ waterboy, a wedding singer, an indie experiment in a blue suit, through all of it, I held onto my crush, as embarrassing as it was. I let it throb in a tiny chair, in a tiny corner of my heart room.

Then things began to change. The movies became charmless. Or he did. I stopped paying to go sit in the theatre, no popcorn on my lap while we whiled away a few hours together in the dark. I didn’t rent his DVDs. I didn’t stop to watch a profanity-free airing on basic cable. I didn’t even consider downloading his latest release. I just stopped caring.

And now. This thing he’s in. I just…

I can’t.

But it’s good. The slow ache is a twinge. Maybe I can go back and watch my old favourites without all our baggage. My love behind us he can just be another idiot I used to think was cool.