November 18, 2020 • 32 mins
Okay, break ups suck. We all know that. But what happens when you share everything from your Nintendo Switch to your dogs? Chaos, that's what. Kalie shares her experience of moving out, moving on, and moving up.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, guys, I'm Kaylie Shure, and this is too much
to say it out of you. This week we're gonna
be talking about breakups, but not any kind of breakup,
(00:22):
particularly the kind where you live together and then you don't.
And I've been through several different types of breakups, but
I can tell you without a doubt that this type
is obviously the most inconvenient. But there's just so many
things that you don't realize you're going to have to
deal with when this happens. So with a normal breakup,
(00:43):
you know, you might go through the motions after which
are like deleting their number, on following them on Instagram,
you know, talking ship to your friends and just trying
to put some distance between yourself and the other person.
And sometimes when you break up with someone, you don't
go the same place, says, you don't have the same
friend groups and you really don't have to see them again,
and that's great and you can kind of just like
(01:05):
put them away in a box and not have to
think about it. Then there's the breakups where your lives
are are really entwined. Maybe you work together, maybe you
go to school together, maybe you have all the same
friends and you have to kind of plan who's going
to go to the birthday party and who's not. And
this is all under the assumption that these are messy breakups,
not like the ones where you can like go get
(01:27):
a coffee after and check in on them. I don't
know a whole lot about those ones. So those pose
a different type of risk because you know you're seeing
them and that it's hard because it's kind of reopening
the wound at all times, and you know they may
have left some things in your closet. You may find
a sweatshirt, etcetera, etcetera. But then when you lived together,
(01:48):
it's a whole different thing. So it's not like necessarily
a divorce, but it's sure shares a lot of similarities.
And when I was going through the move out of
the breakup, it's like you're dividing everything, and obviously, like
you know, you're dividing the obvious things, like you know, um, okay,
(02:09):
you can take the TV in the living room and
I'll take the TV in the bedroom, or okay, yeah,
those are your pots and pans. All take these ones,
and like you know, after six years, who remembers who
bought one anymore? I mean there were so many things
we bought together, and you know, there's furniture, but then
they were like super super random things like Christmas ornaments.
(02:31):
And I wasn't thinking about that at first because we
broke up in May, and as like you know, the
the year goes on, I'm finding more stuff and I'm like, fun,
he's probably gonna want this, And you know, sometimes I
would find something that like I found a book from
one of our friends who had passed away, and there's
really really lovely letter to my ex boyfriend written in it,
(02:52):
and I was like, hmm, he's probably gonna want this,
and I'm not excited to go talk to him, but
like I'm an asshole if I don't give him this
thing that's super super important. And that was like, I
feel like a year after the breakup too. So it
was just I was kept finding these things and reasons
to talk to him. And I remember, like the week
(03:13):
after we broke up, I was like, you can get
off my cell phone pool and I was so pissed,
Like this was a very messy breakup. So all of
this was like ten times harder than it should have been.
There's just no such thing as a clean break in
a breakup period, but especially in one like this. I
had to get new car insurance, and you know, he
had to move out and find another place to live,
(03:34):
and I took the apartment, but there were just so
many things everywhere reminding me of him, and I felt
like my house was a mine field of things to
stumble across, and like it was super weird because he
didn't move out everything all at once. And I remember
the first time I had another guy over after we
broke up, I still had some of his clothes hanging
in my closet and I felt so fucking weird about
(03:56):
that and totally ruined it. And And I was like, I'm
not ready to get back out there. And you know,
I cut things off with that guy, but it was
just his ghost, his energy, his ship was all still
in there, and it just felt like the breakup was
even more recent than it was. And it felt like
that for a really, really long time. And I mean
I still I just moved into a new place, like
(04:18):
right before quarantine happened, and thank god, I like, I
used to live by myself obviously after my ex moved out,
and now I have roommates and that's like totally saved
me during the whole COVID thing because I'm such an extrovert.
It would have been really really hard to live by myself.
But I was moving and I like found a bunch
(04:39):
of stuff that I didn't even know I had, and
it was just like hiding in boxes and like I
found letters and pictures, and I was just like, and
I don't necessarily like I want to throw everything away,
Like I don't want to hang onto it so I
can still feel it, but it's like I want to
keep those six years of my life some how. So
(05:00):
I just shoved everything in a box and put it
in my storage in it and I don't really think
I'm going to look at it. But it's also like
I don't want to erase a six year period of
my life. Like if I had gone through a best
friend breakup like I talked about on last week's episode,
I would have kept like the pictures and I would
have kept the presence they gave me and stuff, and
(05:20):
maybe I wouldn't have looked at them all the time,
but I still would have held onto them. So I
kind of saw this as the same thing. And they're
just in a box with his name on it. Shoved
under some you know, Halloween decorations in my storage in it,
but I kept them, and I think after the move,
it was so good for me to get out of
(05:41):
the apartment that we used to live in and get
into a completely new space and be able to go
through everything I owned and like purge everything that made
me think of him. But there were so many things
I had to get rid of in order to do
that that I didn't necessarily want to get rid of.
One of those things was bed he had built for me.
And he built me this really big, king size bed
(06:04):
frame and it was stained gray and it was really cool,
and you know, it was exactly what I wanted, and
he'd made that for me, and I had it for
a really long time because king bed frames are really expensive.
I really liked this one, and I had him make
me one like that for a reason. But it was
really fucking weird to have that bed frame and you know,
(06:26):
have a male guest over in the bed that my
ex boyfriend built for me. It was really weird. And
that was one of the last things I got rid
of because I just I liked the bed, but it
eventually ended up being too much and I was like, yeah,
I don't want to do this at all. So my
roommate actually bought it off of me, so now it's
(06:48):
in her room. I'm like, you can do whatever you
want with that bed because you have no emotional ties
to it. Then there was the Nintendo Switch, which is
like I'm still very very salty about. So back when
they first came out and they were sold out everywhere,
it was Christmas or his birthday, I forgot which one,
and I got him a Nintendo Switch. But because they
(07:09):
were sold out everywhere, I think I paid like double four,
Like I paid like six d and something dollars for
this Nintendo Switch, which in retrospect I realized was a
little stupid, but you know, it made him really happy.
It was a great gift. Whatever. And I got so
obsessed with Zelda Breath of the Wild, like so obsessed.
So I had beat all four of the Divine Beasts
and those are like really hard to do, and I
(07:32):
learned so much about Zelda and I got really into it.
And it was during the winter and so I just
didn't have a lot going on, and I was just
sitting on my couch playing Breath of the Wild for
hours at a time, which, like maybe me losing the
Nintendo switch was necessary because of how much time I
was spending on it. But I really really liked that game,
(07:52):
and so I had purposely beat all four of the
Divine Beasts and so I could go into the final
thing and beat Gannon, who's like the the Evil Overlord
would've but I wanted to play it and and do
every single thing and beat like all twenty shrines or
whatever there were. If you guys have not played Zelda,
I know I'm just like, this is gibberish, but just
bear with me. So that was very important to me
(08:15):
that I played the game like that, and it wasn't
easy to get to that point and to get all
the resources and like, you know, do the damn thing.
And so when we broke up, I was still in
the process of beating this game. Fuck me, I'm so
mad because he took it when we broke up, and
I don't know how that works, because it was a
(08:35):
gift I gave him, but we used it equally, and
I paid a literal arm and a leg for it
just for him to cheat on me and suck my friends.
So I'm definitely still a little salty and I could
go buy a new Nintendo Switch. Actually I probably couldn't
because you know, I don't really have a job right now. Um,
but when I have money again, I could go buy
(08:56):
a Nintendo Switch. But I'm kind of like, maybe I
need to just leave that in my past. No matter
how much I loved Breath of the Wild, I need
to let it go. Then there were things like books
and records and you know, all the poetic things that
you hear about in the Keith Therapist. Only take your records,
take your feet, don't take You'll know. Actually I will
(09:17):
take the records, thank you very much. I'll take the
record player funk off. So the things I got in
the breakup are mostly I didn't have a TV for
a really long time. I just didn't really care because
I was doing so much Like after we broke up.
I don't even really watch that much TV now during
(09:38):
Quarantine and there's a couple of shows that I get
really into, but I don't think I had a TV
for like six months. And then finally my friends were like, Kaylee,
get a fucking TV. You are a weirdo. So I
got a TV, and I got like a really small
one that's like barely a computer screen, and my friend
Catherine was like, Kayleie, get a big girl TV. So
I got a big girl TV. Christian gay of me
(10:00):
one or else I would not have done it. But yeah,
I was like, told him he could have the TV
and I would take all the other things. But it
was really like I made it seem like a sacrificial thing.
I was like, I guess you can have the television,
but really I just did not give two shuts about it.
So there were easy things to part with. There were
difficult things to part with. But the really shitty parts
(10:20):
of breakups like this aren't the material possessions. It was
obviously the loss of friends, which I talked about on
last week's episode. That's really difficult, and how do you
divide a person? I mean, this makes me think of
that story in the Bible about there's two women fighting
(10:41):
over a baby and they're both saying that it's their child,
and the king is like, okay, well what we'll do
is we'll cut the baby in half. And then he
was like, that's how i'll know which one of you
is actually the mother, because the one who says no,
she can have him is the actual mother. And I
don't know what was running through the other ladies mind,
and she was like, yeah, yeah, I'll take half a baby,
(11:02):
I'll take the torso please what the ship. Anyways, there's
a lot of weird stuff happening in the Old Testament,
but it makes me think of that because you can't
just like cut your friends in half. But I have
this theory that Okay, picture a spectrum where I'm on
one end and my ex boyfriends on the other, and
(11:24):
our friends are dead center. So if our friends are
in the middle, they're too far away from either of
us to actually be a good friend. And being Switzerland
and being neutral seems like it's the adult thing to do,
but I actually really disagree with that, because you have
to pick a side, especially if it's a messy breakup,
like you have to. You can still love the other person,
(11:46):
but like at the beginning, you really need to decide
who you're going to be there for, because if you're
in the middle, you're too far away from either person
to actually be a good friend. You can't actually listen
to them objectively because you're too close to both people
but you're too far away. And then if you go
a little bit over to one side, you're just getting
further and further away from the other person, and so
(12:09):
you just need to commit to one person over the other.
And it blows my mind that in breakups sometimes people
go to the side of the person that their friend
introduced them to, Like it's like, oh wait, homie, the
only reason my ex boyfriend knows you is because I
introduced you to him. And I just had a friend
(12:30):
go through the same thing last week, and I was
just like, I don't know why people do that, but
honestly pick a side when they are able to get
past it and outgrow those feelings of anger and just
be a little less resentful towards their ex, Like, then
you can work on that friendship. But it is completely
(12:51):
within your rights as a friend to be like, hey,
you know, they're going through a really hard time and
I don't want to get in the middle. And if
I'm trying to stay friends with both of you, I am,
by definition in the middle. So I'm just gonna try
to be there for them in the best way I
know how, and I'll reach out to you when I
feel like it's an appropriate time. Like that is okay,
That's called setting a boundary and I promise you both
(13:14):
sides will probably appreciate that you did that, especially you
know whosever side you take, because they're gonna feel supported
and they're not going to have to worry about what
they're telling you. You know, like people want to talk
ship at the end of a breakup, they really really do.
And if they're like, is this going to get back
to them, They're not gonna feel safe with you, and
(13:34):
you're just not going to be able to be the
friend that that person needs. And it's just not worth
it to be Switzerland unless it's the country Switzerland. The
country is a great country. But you know what I mean. Now,
the friends were hard. But the thing that still breaks
my heart a lot. I'm gonna try not to cry
when I'm talking about it is Um. We had two
(13:54):
dogs together and their names are Buddy and June. I
up June and I got her in Um right after
I moved to Nashville. I got her as a puppy
on craigslist. Um. She's a bad at Hound lab mix
and she's just the spunkiest little girl. I named after
(14:15):
June Carter Cash and I got to watch her grow
up from a puppy and she was the first dog
I ever had. I didn't have dogs growing up, but
I always loved them, and so it was so amazing
for me to finally be able to do that when
I was nineteen. And when I first moved to town,
I really didn't have any friends or know anybody, and
so it really was just me my ex boyfriend in June,
(14:38):
and we had his childhood dog, mj there as well,
and she was a really, really really good dog. She
passed away pretty soon after we moved to Nashville, and
so June was especially important to have because she got
both of us through that challenge. But she was technically
my first dog, and I just adore her so much.
(14:58):
She's she's so cute and has all these like little
quirks about her, like if you walk in the door,
she's just gonna like like pedal her feet on the
couch and just like yell at you and then like
finally explode and just zoom across the room to go
give you kisses. And about a year after we got June,
(15:19):
I believe in twenty maybe it's fifteen, so maybe two
years after a year and a half, we got Buddy.
And Buddy is a rescue from animal testing. So he
came from this group called Beagle Freedom Project, and they
rescue dogs out of labs and give them a second
chance at life, whereas the lab would normally euthanize them.
(15:42):
I'm probably gonna do a whole episode on this because
I want to be able to share the things I've
learned from both adopting and fostering dogs from Beagle Freedom Project.
But Buddy's a little miracle dog. He has tattoos and
his ears from the lab, and definitely some major anxiety problems,
but he's so precious and like just wants to love people,
(16:03):
and it's so beautiful to watch because all people really
did the first year of his life was hurt him.
And he's still so trusting of people and so loving
and just wants to be everybody's friend. And he came
with the name Buddy, which I probably wouldn't have picked,
but I couldn't imagine him being named anything else because
he's such a buddy. And he's a little Veagle Lab
(16:25):
mix and just looks like a forever puppy, like he's
like a little shrunken lab and he's just the cutest
And so I put in a lot of time and
and love and effort into helping him recover from his
really traumatic life and give him a safe place to
(16:46):
grow up and and see him turn into the very healthy,
happy dog he is today. And he really would never
know that he went through so much. And I just
fucking love those dogs so much. But when we broke
up two years ago, I was touring all the time,
(17:07):
but I was still insistent on us having shared custody
of the dogs, which I know that sounds ridiculous, but
you have me on. Basically what we would do is
(17:30):
the first few weeks two months that we broke up,
he was living with a friend and the dogs aren't
really an option for him, so I had them, and
I'm so glad because it was a really shitty time
for me, and also, like living alone is kind of
scary at first, so having my animals there was really awesome.
(17:51):
And then he got his own place and was able
to start taking them, so I was like, Okay, well
let's go back and forth. So we do like two
weeks on, two weeks off, depending on my touring schedules.
Sometimes it would get a little bit you know, rearrange there.
But I had to see my ex all the time,
we could just like, you know, drop the dogs in
a neutral occasion and I'd go pick them up. Like
(18:11):
we had to see each other. I had to go
over to his house, he'd have to come over to
mine or whatever, and it was always like it was
always dramatic, and I mean the first few times, he
would always try to make out with me or whatever,
and I was just like, oh, and it was just
messy and super unnecessary. But I would literally do anything
(18:31):
for those dogs, and that's why I had to eventually
end up letting him have them the majority of the time. Um,
and then now he just has them, and I knew
that with my lifestyle traveling seven that they would you know,
I have to be with him anyways, and then that
(18:54):
I would have to see him or I'd have to
bring them to a kennel, which I wouldn't want to do,
or pay for a dog sitter, and that just really
gets really expensive on musicians living. And there were just
so many different factors. But finally, you know, one day,
my manager was like, Kayleie, you just you have to
stop seeing him because it's fucking with you and it's
(19:15):
keeping you in this headspace where you're still going through
the breakup, Like the breakup felt so perpetual because it
was just getting so dragged out by all of this.
And yes, that was because we lived together, but it
was also because of the dogs, and I kind of
thought so our agreement was that he would get the
(19:37):
dogs and I would dog sit whenever he went out
of town. But then the problem is, and I probably
should have known, is that this is a he's lied before.
Why wouldn't he like? And and he started having other
people watch them, and I would text him and be like, hey, um,
I heard that so and so watch the dogs. Or
(19:59):
I would see something on Venmo where he'd like Venmo
someone for pet sitting, and I was like, what the funk?
Like we had one term of this agreement, which was
that I would dogs at them, and then also that
like if he ever had to rehome them for any
reason or he was moving away to another state or whatever,
we'd have to completely reevaluate the situation because I don't
(20:21):
want a new dog. I want those ones. I'm so
attached to them and I haven't been able to shake
it at all, Like I love them so much. And
so it hurt really bad when he was doing that
because I was like, God, it's just like the fucking
gift that keeps on giving, Like this breakup just keeps
hurting over and over and over in new ways. And
(20:43):
so I don't remember the last time I've seen them.
I think I went over and took them out when
he had a long work day or something one time,
like maybe like a year ago. And that sucks. That
fucking blows so bad. And I'll always see pick shows
of them on my phone, and like I still watch
his story sometimes because I want to see the dogs,
(21:06):
and I have pictures of them, and I've had so
many fans give me presents, like someone did this beautiful
drawing of June, and another fan gave me a snow
globe that has pictures of the dogs together in it,
and I have these things all over my room and
it's just heartbreaking. And like last week and um, the
week before, I had like a couple of dreams where,
(21:31):
oh god, it just sucks so bad. I had a
couple of dreams where I was with the dogs and
it felt so normal and like they were there again.
And I woke up and I thought they were in
bed with me, and they were and it's I know
what sounds like dramatic, and if you haven't had a dog,
(21:55):
it's it's like, oh, well, it's just a dog. But
it's not like when I didn't have any friends here.
I had my talk and when I went through the breakup,
I had them when I was depressed and I wasn't
eating and wasn't taking care of myself. The only thing
(22:15):
that got me out of bed was having to take
care of them, and I was able to put their
needs ahead of mine because I just didn't feel like
taking care of myself. But taking care of them was
what got me up and out of bed every morning
and kept me from just spiraling because I'd have to
get up and go outside and take them out and
you know, see the sun and not just completely just
(22:37):
be a piece of ship and stay in bed for
a week straight because I probably would have otherwise. And
so it's just really hard and it hasn't gotten any easier,
and I don't know if or when it will. The
last time I had them full time, like well, not
full time, but like when him and I were going
back and forth. The last time I had them as
(22:58):
like their owner, co own or whatever you want to
call it was January of and that was right before
my sister passed away. So I had told my ex,
you know, he could come get them. I was going
to keep them for a couple of weeks and really
enjoy that time with them, And so he came over
(23:20):
and picked them up. But at that point, it was
like the day after my sister passed away, so I
had to not only like leave my dogs and and
give them to him, but I also had to see him.
And then it was this home mess, and I was
just like sobbing, and it was just probably the worst
added layer to what was already the worst week of
(23:41):
my life. And it just was insult to injury and
just really hard. But one thing that really helped was
when I went back home for my sister's funeral. My
dad had to um adopt her children, but he also
had to adopt several of my sister's animals as all.
And I was like, Dad, you probably need one less
(24:04):
mouth to feed. How about I take monkey? And I
think my dad might have actually offered but Monkeys a
cat that I've had since I was eight years old,
so he's really old. He's nineteen. I think at this
point his age is a little bit nebulous, but I
know he's very old, and he's like minimum nineteen years old,
and so I didn't have to come back to an
(24:27):
empty house without a pet, which I think was just
like the grace of God because it would have sucked.
And so when I was going through that and really
missing them, I had Monkey and he's just such a
good boy. He's like the kind of cat that makes
people who, hey, cats love cats, and he's just so
(24:48):
loving and he's amazing. And I have to take him
to the vet today because he's lost a little bit
of weight, but other than that, he's very healthy for
his age and he's very spunky and very I got
him a Christmas sweater and he actually really likes it
like I love him. So that was the only thing
that made this any easier. So it's not a divorce,
(25:11):
but it certainly fucking feels like one. And all I
would say is I think really hard before you move
in with someone. I wouldn't have done anything differently. I
have totally accepted that this was part of my life
path and I needed to go through this to get
to where I'm at right now. And I'm really happy
with where I'm at right now. I do wish there
(25:32):
were two little dogs here, but that's the only thing
I'd probably change. But think really hard about it, because
it's not really something you're just trying. It's something that's
going to affect you, even if you break up with
them and you don't love them anymore, and it's it's
easier for you. You're going to be carrying around that
guilt knowing that it was hard for them and that
(25:52):
they were going through all this stuff, and it's just
makes things ten times messier. So if you're going to
move in with someone, don't do it so you can
save money on rent. Don't do it because you feel
like you have to do it because you've thought long
and hard about it and you are pretty positive this
is the person you're gonna end up with for the
(26:13):
rest of your life. So the day I wrote the
song the one on my album with Savannah Kaiz and
Skip Black. I've talked a little bit about this on
the podcast and in interviews, but I wrote that ten
hours after him and I broke up, and that was
that was just a fucking day. And I went in
the studio and I almost didn't want to go, but
I was like, you know, what being with Savannah and
(26:33):
Skip always feels like therapy. I just kind of want
to be around people I know love me and won't
judge me, and so I went into the right We
wrote the one which ended up on my album, but
we also wrote this other song that didn't, and it's
called Couch, and so I wanted to play it for
you because it's about, you know, dividing up your things,
and it's very on point with this topic. So that's
(26:55):
why this episode is called Who Gets the Couch? And
this is my song Stilling at the sailing Fan. It'spenning
like my world that's in your hand. Whish I could
(27:20):
have said I've seen this coming, like it was written
in the start of something. Staying at the same fan.
Broken like that doy you said you would fix how
didn't know then that you would walk out of it,
(27:45):
saving off of tickets, making plans for forever anywhere we go.
It's show up together. Now we're broken, like that doy
you said you would face God, fuck you a pride
and to get hard. You have your future and oh
(28:09):
you'll guitars. Now I'm sitting in an empty room. You'll
still belong to me. Get you a million questions in
my head, but all that comes out it's who gets
the couch? Left a picture on your night stand? Like
(28:35):
it's some kind of message like I don't give it
down if I need. Ton't matter that I'm broken hearted. Baby,
there's a million in this apartment. I don't need a
picture on your own night stands to your pride and
(28:59):
I till get high. You have your future? Oh you
good size? Now I'm'm sitting in and emtivil used to
belong to me? Get you? Amongion questions in my habit
all that comes out, Who gets the castle we saved
(29:23):
up for made out on? Will you help me? When
I cried? Call your friend with the truck? You canno
have it? It's I'm too tired out of fight. You
took your pride. I took it hard. You took my
(29:44):
future and all your good size? How the hell do
we move on and move out? A million questions in
my head, but it all that comes out, Oh yeah,
So who gets the couch? Who gets the couch? I've
(30:15):
always loved that song and it was so important for
me to write, and I just want to say thank
you to Savannachize and Skip Blackford always letting me be
honest and transparent and cry and write, and um, I'm
happy that I got to play that song for you, guys,
if you are wondering, it's been two years now and
the fate of the couch. What ended up happening was
(30:37):
he took the love seat, I took the couch, and
now that couch is in my new boyfriend's house, so
I don't live with him, but he gave him my
couch because I didn't need it anymore anyways, and you've
got it. So thank you, guys so much for tuning in.
Moral of the story here is if you're going through
(30:58):
something like this, your pain is valid. But people survive
crazy things. I've survived crazy things, and you will wake
up one day and not think about them, and you
will wake up one day and look at I don't know,
a pillow or an end table or a book or
whatever something you used to have in your house together,
(31:19):
and you're going to just be like, oh, yeah, that's
a pillow or an end table or a book. It's
not it's not an embodiment of that person. So, UM,
if you have gone through something like that, sending you
my love, I know it really fucking sucks, but I
made it through it and I got a king battle
to myself. Now. I love that for me. Thanks for
tuning in. My name is Kaylie Short and this is
(31:41):
too much to say. See you next Wednesday. Question it
out you
Hey, guys, I'm Kaylie Shure, and this is too much
to say it out of you. This week we're gonna
be talking about breakups, but not any kind of breakup,
(00:22):
particularly the kind where you live together and then you don't.
And I've been through several different types of breakups, but
I can tell you without a doubt that this type
is obviously the most inconvenient. But there's just so many
things that you don't realize you're going to have to
deal with when this happens. So with a normal breakup,
(00:43):
you know, you might go through the motions after which
are like deleting their number, on following them on Instagram,
you know, talking ship to your friends and just trying
to put some distance between yourself and the other person.
And sometimes when you break up with someone, you don't
go the same place, says, you don't have the same
friend groups and you really don't have to see them again,
and that's great and you can kind of just like
(01:05):
put them away in a box and not have to
think about it. Then there's the breakups where your lives
are are really entwined. Maybe you work together, maybe you
go to school together, maybe you have all the same
friends and you have to kind of plan who's going
to go to the birthday party and who's not. And
this is all under the assumption that these are messy breakups,
not like the ones where you can like go get
(01:27):
a coffee after and check in on them. I don't
know a whole lot about those ones. So those pose
a different type of risk because you know you're seeing
them and that it's hard because it's kind of reopening
the wound at all times, and you know they may
have left some things in your closet. You may find
a sweatshirt, etcetera, etcetera. But then when you lived together,
(01:48):
it's a whole different thing. So it's not like necessarily
a divorce, but it's sure shares a lot of similarities.
And when I was going through the move out of
the breakup, it's like you're dividing everything, and obviously, like
you know, you're dividing the obvious things, like you know, um, okay,
(02:09):
you can take the TV in the living room and
I'll take the TV in the bedroom, or okay, yeah,
those are your pots and pans. All take these ones,
and like you know, after six years, who remembers who
bought one anymore? I mean there were so many things
we bought together, and you know, there's furniture, but then
they were like super super random things like Christmas ornaments.
(02:31):
And I wasn't thinking about that at first because we
broke up in May, and as like you know, the
the year goes on, I'm finding more stuff and I'm like, fun,
he's probably gonna want this, And you know, sometimes I
would find something that like I found a book from
one of our friends who had passed away, and there's
really really lovely letter to my ex boyfriend written in it,
(02:52):
and I was like, hmm, he's probably gonna want this,
and I'm not excited to go talk to him, but
like I'm an asshole if I don't give him this
thing that's super super important. And that was like, I
feel like a year after the breakup too. So it
was just I was kept finding these things and reasons
to talk to him. And I remember, like the week
(03:13):
after we broke up, I was like, you can get
off my cell phone pool and I was so pissed,
Like this was a very messy breakup. So all of
this was like ten times harder than it should have been.
There's just no such thing as a clean break in
a breakup period, but especially in one like this. I
had to get new car insurance, and you know, he
had to move out and find another place to live,
(03:34):
and I took the apartment, but there were just so
many things everywhere reminding me of him, and I felt
like my house was a mine field of things to
stumble across, and like it was super weird because he
didn't move out everything all at once. And I remember
the first time I had another guy over after we
broke up, I still had some of his clothes hanging
in my closet and I felt so fucking weird about
(03:56):
that and totally ruined it. And And I was like, I'm
not ready to get back out there. And you know,
I cut things off with that guy, but it was
just his ghost, his energy, his ship was all still
in there, and it just felt like the breakup was
even more recent than it was. And it felt like
that for a really, really long time. And I mean
I still I just moved into a new place, like
(04:18):
right before quarantine happened, and thank god, I like, I
used to live by myself obviously after my ex moved out,
and now I have roommates and that's like totally saved
me during the whole COVID thing because I'm such an extrovert.
It would have been really really hard to live by myself.
But I was moving and I like found a bunch
(04:39):
of stuff that I didn't even know I had, and
it was just like hiding in boxes and like I
found letters and pictures, and I was just like, and
I don't necessarily like I want to throw everything away,
Like I don't want to hang onto it so I
can still feel it, but it's like I want to
keep those six years of my life some how. So
(05:00):
I just shoved everything in a box and put it
in my storage in it and I don't really think
I'm going to look at it. But it's also like
I don't want to erase a six year period of
my life. Like if I had gone through a best
friend breakup like I talked about on last week's episode,
I would have kept like the pictures and I would
have kept the presence they gave me and stuff, and
(05:20):
maybe I wouldn't have looked at them all the time,
but I still would have held onto them. So I
kind of saw this as the same thing. And they're
just in a box with his name on it. Shoved
under some you know, Halloween decorations in my storage in it,
but I kept them, and I think after the move,
it was so good for me to get out of
(05:41):
the apartment that we used to live in and get
into a completely new space and be able to go
through everything I owned and like purge everything that made
me think of him. But there were so many things
I had to get rid of in order to do
that that I didn't necessarily want to get rid of.
One of those things was bed he had built for me.
And he built me this really big, king size bed
(06:04):
frame and it was stained gray and it was really cool,
and you know, it was exactly what I wanted, and
he'd made that for me, and I had it for
a really long time because king bed frames are really expensive.
I really liked this one, and I had him make
me one like that for a reason. But it was
really fucking weird to have that bed frame and you know,
(06:26):
have a male guest over in the bed that my
ex boyfriend built for me. It was really weird. And
that was one of the last things I got rid
of because I just I liked the bed, but it
eventually ended up being too much and I was like, yeah,
I don't want to do this at all. So my
roommate actually bought it off of me, so now it's
(06:48):
in her room. I'm like, you can do whatever you
want with that bed because you have no emotional ties
to it. Then there was the Nintendo Switch, which is
like I'm still very very salty about. So back when
they first came out and they were sold out everywhere,
it was Christmas or his birthday, I forgot which one,
and I got him a Nintendo Switch. But because they
(07:09):
were sold out everywhere, I think I paid like double four,
Like I paid like six d and something dollars for
this Nintendo Switch, which in retrospect I realized was a
little stupid, but you know, it made him really happy.
It was a great gift. Whatever. And I got so
obsessed with Zelda Breath of the Wild, like so obsessed.
So I had beat all four of the Divine Beasts
and those are like really hard to do, and I
(07:32):
learned so much about Zelda and I got really into it.
And it was during the winter and so I just
didn't have a lot going on, and I was just
sitting on my couch playing Breath of the Wild for
hours at a time, which, like maybe me losing the
Nintendo switch was necessary because of how much time I
was spending on it. But I really really liked that game,
(07:52):
and so I had purposely beat all four of the
Divine Beasts and so I could go into the final
thing and beat Gannon, who's like the the Evil Overlord
would've but I wanted to play it and and do
every single thing and beat like all twenty shrines or
whatever there were. If you guys have not played Zelda,
I know I'm just like, this is gibberish, but just
bear with me. So that was very important to me
(08:15):
that I played the game like that, and it wasn't
easy to get to that point and to get all
the resources and like, you know, do the damn thing.
And so when we broke up, I was still in
the process of beating this game. Fuck me, I'm so
mad because he took it when we broke up, and
I don't know how that works, because it was a
(08:35):
gift I gave him, but we used it equally, and
I paid a literal arm and a leg for it
just for him to cheat on me and suck my friends.
So I'm definitely still a little salty and I could
go buy a new Nintendo Switch. Actually I probably couldn't
because you know, I don't really have a job right now. Um,
but when I have money again, I could go buy
(08:56):
a Nintendo Switch. But I'm kind of like, maybe I
need to just leave that in my past. No matter
how much I loved Breath of the Wild, I need
to let it go. Then there were things like books
and records and you know, all the poetic things that
you hear about in the Keith Therapist. Only take your records,
take your feet, don't take You'll know. Actually I will
(09:17):
take the records, thank you very much. I'll take the
record player funk off. So the things I got in
the breakup are mostly I didn't have a TV for
a really long time. I just didn't really care because
I was doing so much Like after we broke up.
I don't even really watch that much TV now during
(09:38):
Quarantine and there's a couple of shows that I get
really into, but I don't think I had a TV
for like six months. And then finally my friends were like, Kaylee,
get a fucking TV. You are a weirdo. So I
got a TV, and I got like a really small
one that's like barely a computer screen, and my friend
Catherine was like, Kayleie, get a big girl TV. So
I got a big girl TV. Christian gay of me
(10:00):
one or else I would not have done it. But yeah,
I was like, told him he could have the TV
and I would take all the other things. But it
was really like I made it seem like a sacrificial thing.
I was like, I guess you can have the television,
but really I just did not give two shuts about it.
So there were easy things to part with. There were
difficult things to part with. But the really shitty parts
(10:20):
of breakups like this aren't the material possessions. It was
obviously the loss of friends, which I talked about on
last week's episode. That's really difficult, and how do you
divide a person? I mean, this makes me think of
that story in the Bible about there's two women fighting
(10:41):
over a baby and they're both saying that it's their child,
and the king is like, okay, well what we'll do
is we'll cut the baby in half. And then he
was like, that's how i'll know which one of you
is actually the mother, because the one who says no,
she can have him is the actual mother. And I
don't know what was running through the other ladies mind,
and she was like, yeah, yeah, I'll take half a baby,
(11:02):
I'll take the torso please what the ship. Anyways, there's
a lot of weird stuff happening in the Old Testament,
but it makes me think of that because you can't
just like cut your friends in half. But I have
this theory that Okay, picture a spectrum where I'm on
one end and my ex boyfriends on the other, and
(11:24):
our friends are dead center. So if our friends are
in the middle, they're too far away from either of
us to actually be a good friend. And being Switzerland
and being neutral seems like it's the adult thing to do,
but I actually really disagree with that, because you have
to pick a side, especially if it's a messy breakup,
like you have to. You can still love the other person,
(11:46):
but like at the beginning, you really need to decide
who you're going to be there for, because if you're
in the middle, you're too far away from either person
to actually be a good friend. You can't actually listen
to them objectively because you're too close to both people
but you're too far away. And then if you go
a little bit over to one side, you're just getting
further and further away from the other person, and so
(12:09):
you just need to commit to one person over the other.
And it blows my mind that in breakups sometimes people
go to the side of the person that their friend
introduced them to, Like it's like, oh wait, homie, the
only reason my ex boyfriend knows you is because I
introduced you to him. And I just had a friend
(12:30):
go through the same thing last week, and I was
just like, I don't know why people do that, but
honestly pick a side when they are able to get
past it and outgrow those feelings of anger and just
be a little less resentful towards their ex, Like, then
you can work on that friendship. But it is completely
(12:51):
within your rights as a friend to be like, hey,
you know, they're going through a really hard time and
I don't want to get in the middle. And if
I'm trying to stay friends with both of you, I am,
by definition in the middle. So I'm just gonna try
to be there for them in the best way I
know how, and I'll reach out to you when I
feel like it's an appropriate time. Like that is okay,
That's called setting a boundary and I promise you both
(13:14):
sides will probably appreciate that you did that, especially you
know whosever side you take, because they're gonna feel supported
and they're not going to have to worry about what
they're telling you. You know, like people want to talk
ship at the end of a breakup, they really really do.
And if they're like, is this going to get back
to them, They're not gonna feel safe with you, and
(13:34):
you're just not going to be able to be the
friend that that person needs. And it's just not worth
it to be Switzerland unless it's the country Switzerland. The
country is a great country. But you know what I mean. Now,
the friends were hard. But the thing that still breaks
my heart a lot. I'm gonna try not to cry
when I'm talking about it is Um. We had two
(13:54):
dogs together and their names are Buddy and June. I
up June and I got her in Um right after
I moved to Nashville. I got her as a puppy
on craigslist. Um. She's a bad at Hound lab mix
and she's just the spunkiest little girl. I named after
(14:15):
June Carter Cash and I got to watch her grow
up from a puppy and she was the first dog
I ever had. I didn't have dogs growing up, but
I always loved them, and so it was so amazing
for me to finally be able to do that when
I was nineteen. And when I first moved to town,
I really didn't have any friends or know anybody, and
so it really was just me my ex boyfriend in June,
(14:38):
and we had his childhood dog, mj there as well,
and she was a really, really really good dog. She
passed away pretty soon after we moved to Nashville, and
so June was especially important to have because she got
both of us through that challenge. But she was technically
my first dog, and I just adore her so much.
(14:58):
She's she's so cute and has all these like little
quirks about her, like if you walk in the door,
she's just gonna like like pedal her feet on the
couch and just like yell at you and then like
finally explode and just zoom across the room to go
give you kisses. And about a year after we got June,
(15:19):
I believe in twenty maybe it's fifteen, so maybe two
years after a year and a half, we got Buddy.
And Buddy is a rescue from animal testing. So he
came from this group called Beagle Freedom Project, and they
rescue dogs out of labs and give them a second
chance at life, whereas the lab would normally euthanize them.
(15:42):
I'm probably gonna do a whole episode on this because
I want to be able to share the things I've
learned from both adopting and fostering dogs from Beagle Freedom Project.
But Buddy's a little miracle dog. He has tattoos and
his ears from the lab, and definitely some major anxiety problems,
but he's so precious and like just wants to love people,
(16:03):
and it's so beautiful to watch because all people really
did the first year of his life was hurt him.
And he's still so trusting of people and so loving
and just wants to be everybody's friend. And he came
with the name Buddy, which I probably wouldn't have picked,
but I couldn't imagine him being named anything else because
he's such a buddy. And he's a little Veagle Lab
(16:25):
mix and just looks like a forever puppy, like he's
like a little shrunken lab and he's just the cutest
And so I put in a lot of time and
and love and effort into helping him recover from his
really traumatic life and give him a safe place to
(16:46):
grow up and and see him turn into the very healthy,
happy dog he is today. And he really would never
know that he went through so much. And I just
fucking love those dogs so much. But when we broke
up two years ago, I was touring all the time,
(17:07):
but I was still insistent on us having shared custody
of the dogs, which I know that sounds ridiculous, but
you have me on. Basically what we would do is
(17:30):
the first few weeks two months that we broke up,
he was living with a friend and the dogs aren't
really an option for him, so I had them, and
I'm so glad because it was a really shitty time
for me, and also, like living alone is kind of
scary at first, so having my animals there was really awesome.
(17:51):
And then he got his own place and was able
to start taking them, so I was like, Okay, well
let's go back and forth. So we do like two
weeks on, two weeks off, depending on my touring schedules.
Sometimes it would get a little bit you know, rearrange there.
But I had to see my ex all the time,
we could just like, you know, drop the dogs in
a neutral occasion and I'd go pick them up. Like
(18:11):
we had to see each other. I had to go
over to his house, he'd have to come over to
mine or whatever, and it was always like it was
always dramatic, and I mean the first few times, he
would always try to make out with me or whatever,
and I was just like, oh, and it was just
messy and super unnecessary. But I would literally do anything
(18:31):
for those dogs, and that's why I had to eventually
end up letting him have them the majority of the time. Um,
and then now he just has them, and I knew
that with my lifestyle traveling seven that they would you know,
I have to be with him anyways, and then that
(18:54):
I would have to see him or I'd have to
bring them to a kennel, which I wouldn't want to do,
or pay for a dog sitter, and that just really
gets really expensive on musicians living. And there were just
so many different factors. But finally, you know, one day,
my manager was like, Kayleie, you just you have to
stop seeing him because it's fucking with you and it's
(19:15):
keeping you in this headspace where you're still going through
the breakup, Like the breakup felt so perpetual because it
was just getting so dragged out by all of this.
And yes, that was because we lived together, but it
was also because of the dogs, and I kind of
thought so our agreement was that he would get the
(19:37):
dogs and I would dog sit whenever he went out
of town. But then the problem is, and I probably
should have known, is that this is a he's lied before.
Why wouldn't he like? And and he started having other
people watch them, and I would text him and be like, hey, um,
I heard that so and so watch the dogs. Or
(19:59):
I would see something on Venmo where he'd like Venmo
someone for pet sitting, and I was like, what the funk?
Like we had one term of this agreement, which was
that I would dogs at them, and then also that
like if he ever had to rehome them for any
reason or he was moving away to another state or whatever,
we'd have to completely reevaluate the situation because I don't
(20:21):
want a new dog. I want those ones. I'm so
attached to them and I haven't been able to shake
it at all, Like I love them so much. And
so it hurt really bad when he was doing that
because I was like, God, it's just like the fucking
gift that keeps on giving, Like this breakup just keeps
hurting over and over and over in new ways. And
(20:43):
so I don't remember the last time I've seen them.
I think I went over and took them out when
he had a long work day or something one time,
like maybe like a year ago. And that sucks. That
fucking blows so bad. And I'll always see pick shows
of them on my phone, and like I still watch
his story sometimes because I want to see the dogs,
(21:06):
and I have pictures of them, and I've had so
many fans give me presents, like someone did this beautiful
drawing of June, and another fan gave me a snow
globe that has pictures of the dogs together in it,
and I have these things all over my room and
it's just heartbreaking. And like last week and um, the
week before, I had like a couple of dreams where,
(21:31):
oh god, it just sucks so bad. I had a
couple of dreams where I was with the dogs and
it felt so normal and like they were there again.
And I woke up and I thought they were in
bed with me, and they were and it's I know
what sounds like dramatic, and if you haven't had a dog,
(21:55):
it's it's like, oh, well, it's just a dog. But
it's not like when I didn't have any friends here.
I had my talk and when I went through the breakup,
I had them when I was depressed and I wasn't
eating and wasn't taking care of myself. The only thing
(22:15):
that got me out of bed was having to take
care of them, and I was able to put their
needs ahead of mine because I just didn't feel like
taking care of myself. But taking care of them was
what got me up and out of bed every morning
and kept me from just spiraling because I'd have to
get up and go outside and take them out and
you know, see the sun and not just completely just
(22:37):
be a piece of ship and stay in bed for
a week straight because I probably would have otherwise. And
so it's just really hard and it hasn't gotten any easier,
and I don't know if or when it will. The
last time I had them full time, like well, not
full time, but like when him and I were going
back and forth. The last time I had them as
(22:58):
like their owner, co own or whatever you want to
call it was January of and that was right before
my sister passed away. So I had told my ex,
you know, he could come get them. I was going
to keep them for a couple of weeks and really
enjoy that time with them, And so he came over
(23:20):
and picked them up. But at that point, it was
like the day after my sister passed away, so I
had to not only like leave my dogs and and
give them to him, but I also had to see him.
And then it was this home mess, and I was
just like sobbing, and it was just probably the worst
added layer to what was already the worst week of
(23:41):
my life. And it just was insult to injury and
just really hard. But one thing that really helped was
when I went back home for my sister's funeral. My
dad had to um adopt her children, but he also
had to adopt several of my sister's animals as all.
And I was like, Dad, you probably need one less
(24:04):
mouth to feed. How about I take monkey? And I
think my dad might have actually offered but Monkeys a
cat that I've had since I was eight years old,
so he's really old. He's nineteen. I think at this
point his age is a little bit nebulous, but I
know he's very old, and he's like minimum nineteen years old,
and so I didn't have to come back to an
(24:27):
empty house without a pet, which I think was just
like the grace of God because it would have sucked.
And so when I was going through that and really
missing them, I had Monkey and he's just such a
good boy. He's like the kind of cat that makes
people who, hey, cats love cats, and he's just so
(24:48):
loving and he's amazing. And I have to take him
to the vet today because he's lost a little bit
of weight, but other than that, he's very healthy for
his age and he's very spunky and very I got
him a Christmas sweater and he actually really likes it
like I love him. So that was the only thing
that made this any easier. So it's not a divorce,
(25:11):
but it certainly fucking feels like one. And all I
would say is I think really hard before you move
in with someone. I wouldn't have done anything differently. I
have totally accepted that this was part of my life
path and I needed to go through this to get
to where I'm at right now. And I'm really happy
with where I'm at right now. I do wish there
(25:32):
were two little dogs here, but that's the only thing
I'd probably change. But think really hard about it, because
it's not really something you're just trying. It's something that's
going to affect you, even if you break up with
them and you don't love them anymore, and it's it's
easier for you. You're going to be carrying around that
guilt knowing that it was hard for them and that
(25:52):
they were going through all this stuff, and it's just
makes things ten times messier. So if you're going to
move in with someone, don't do it so you can
save money on rent. Don't do it because you feel
like you have to do it because you've thought long
and hard about it and you are pretty positive this
is the person you're gonna end up with for the
(26:13):
rest of your life. So the day I wrote the
song the one on my album with Savannah Kaiz and
Skip Black. I've talked a little bit about this on
the podcast and in interviews, but I wrote that ten
hours after him and I broke up, and that was
that was just a fucking day. And I went in
the studio and I almost didn't want to go, but
I was like, you know, what being with Savannah and
(26:33):
Skip always feels like therapy. I just kind of want
to be around people I know love me and won't
judge me, and so I went into the right We
wrote the one which ended up on my album, but
we also wrote this other song that didn't, and it's
called Couch, and so I wanted to play it for
you because it's about, you know, dividing up your things,
and it's very on point with this topic. So that's
(26:55):
why this episode is called Who Gets the Couch? And
this is my song Stilling at the sailing Fan. It'spenning
like my world that's in your hand. Whish I could
(27:20):
have said I've seen this coming, like it was written
in the start of something. Staying at the same fan.
Broken like that doy you said you would fix how
didn't know then that you would walk out of it,
(27:45):
saving off of tickets, making plans for forever anywhere we go.
It's show up together. Now we're broken, like that doy
you said you would face God, fuck you a pride
and to get hard. You have your future and oh
(28:09):
you'll guitars. Now I'm sitting in an empty room. You'll
still belong to me. Get you a million questions in
my head, but all that comes out it's who gets
the couch? Left a picture on your night stand? Like
(28:35):
it's some kind of message like I don't give it
down if I need. Ton't matter that I'm broken hearted. Baby,
there's a million in this apartment. I don't need a
picture on your own night stands to your pride and
(28:59):
I till get high. You have your future? Oh you
good size? Now I'm'm sitting in and emtivil used to
belong to me? Get you? Amongion questions in my habit
all that comes out, Who gets the castle we saved
(29:23):
up for made out on? Will you help me? When
I cried? Call your friend with the truck? You canno
have it? It's I'm too tired out of fight. You
took your pride. I took it hard. You took my
(29:44):
future and all your good size? How the hell do
we move on and move out? A million questions in
my head, but it all that comes out, Oh yeah,
So who gets the couch? Who gets the couch? I've
(30:15):
always loved that song and it was so important for
me to write, and I just want to say thank
you to Savannachize and Skip Blackford always letting me be
honest and transparent and cry and write, and um, I'm
happy that I got to play that song for you, guys,
if you are wondering, it's been two years now and
the fate of the couch. What ended up happening was
(30:37):
he took the love seat, I took the couch, and
now that couch is in my new boyfriend's house, so
I don't live with him, but he gave him my
couch because I didn't need it anymore anyways, and you've
got it. So thank you, guys so much for tuning in.
Moral of the story here is if you're going through
(30:58):
something like this, your pain is valid. But people survive
crazy things. I've survived crazy things, and you will wake
up one day and not think about them, and you
will wake up one day and look at I don't know,
a pillow or an end table or a book or
whatever something you used to have in your house together,
(31:19):
and you're going to just be like, oh, yeah, that's
a pillow or an end table or a book. It's
not it's not an embodiment of that person. So, UM,
if you have gone through something like that, sending you
my love, I know it really fucking sucks, but I
made it through it and I got a king battle
to myself. Now. I love that for me. Thanks for
tuning in. My name is Kaylie Short and this is
(31:41):
too much to say. See you next Wednesday. Question it
out you
Host
Kalie Shorr
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