When we first started dating, he was appalled that I didn’t know who the Smashing Pumpkins were. He immediately gave me a mix CD of some of his favorite songs, a mix he had listened to for years when he was sad or lonely. It was a piece of him.

For a long time, it was really the only way I knew the Pumpkins, in that order. I didn’t even know the names of half the songs, save for Tonight, Tonight and Whir, my favorites, and Mayonaise, his favorite. When I ripped it to my computer, Windows Media Player mistakenly labelled it Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. People would look at my mp3 player, see the album art and say, “Great album!” and I would smile, I would nod, and I would think of him.

Eventually I came to know them album by album, and tracks that never made their way to his mix managed to fill our own soundtrack, the one that was about me and him. Singing along to 1979 and Today on the radio, the best sex I’ve ever had to the entirety of Adore, road trips and campfires and parties and friends and swimming and love and that first summer. And the second and the third…and so on, and so forth. All of it plays in broken reels when I hear Billy’s voice through my speakers.

It was six years ago this month that we went on that first date, where I made him take me for a smoothie because Blair Bybee had promised me a smoothie that he couldn’t deliver on. It was six years ago that he, Betsy and I stayed up all night long, watching bad movies and laughing. Six years ago that he forgot his contacts before every single performance of Anything Goes, and I’d have to drive him to his house so he could get them. It started six years ago and I’m still hung up on it.

And it was a year ago this month that it ended. Technically. Officially. But we’d carried on, and because of that, people still ask about him, even though it’s been months since I’ve seen him or really even talked to him. And then I just say, “I think he’s good, we don’t really talk anymore,” and I change the subject.

I’ve convinced myself that all this emotional crap that’s been going on, all of the terrible mistakes I’ve been making are just an expression of the changes in my life, from a job I only tolerate, to living alone in a city where I don’t know anyone. I’ve attributed it to loneliness, bad nutrition, and even tried pointing fingers and blaming other people for everything that’s happened.

I really am a good liar, but I’m best at lying to myself. I’ve been drinking too much, and by myself. I’ve done terrible things to wonderful people. It’s all awful. It’s not me. All of this crazy is creeping around because I’m still recovering from a break-up. A really long, hard, necessary break-up.

Really, honestly, truthfully. I miss having someone to say good night to every night. I miss my best friend. There’s my mom, rolling her eyes. I know it sounds stupid. It is stupid. He made so many mistakes. He never saw me and him and life clearly. And then, once he finally did…I was wrapped up in something else. I began to see life outside of him, and I liked it. The fresh air cleansed my soul and cleared my vision. I wanted more. I was addicted.

There’s not one single thing I regret. There’s not an iota of hard feeling toward him, toward that breath of fresh air back in February, or even toward Billy Corgan for making me love him and reminding me that now I don’t.

Because sometimes, when I get tired, I click on that first track in Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Instead of hearing those opening notes of Thirty-three, I get the title track . (Which, really, if you think about it, is so appropriately named that it’s frightening, like they expected this would happen.) When I click to number six, instead of hearing that wonderful cover of Landslide, I get smacked in the face by a Bullet with Butterfly Wings.

Because when I lost all my music a few days after I last saw him, I lost that Smashing Pumpkins mix. I’d had it for five an a half years, through three computers and two mp3 players, two sets of stolen CDs. And then, in a second, I lost it for good. And while I’ve downloaded the Pumpkins’ discography, and I have each of the twenty tracks that made up that CD he gave me, I can’t put it back together. The pieces are there, but I can’t find the’ right order. It’s been too long. Too much has happened, and it just won’t be the same mix.

So I might as well just forget them, even if there is a void I sometimes wish they could fill.

Goodbye, Billy. And James, and D’arcy, and Jimmy. I wish that loving you didn’t hurt so much.