Sontag on Heartbreak
by Lee Felice Pinkas 

My first heartbreak, at age fifteen, sent me to songs. To schlocky inspirational books whose platitudes I held close, repeated like mantras. Later, revisiting the knots of a complicated relationship in my late twenties, I found Susan Sontag’s journals.

“I always fell for the bullies,” Sontag admits. “Their rejection of me showed their superior qualities, their good taste.”

I found her book in Berlin, Germany. I had followed a guy named Jonah there the summer after our breakup. I was not proud of myself, leaning on pretexts to save myself from the truth that I had crossed the Atlantic to pursue the ghost of a relationship.