In “Cross Country,” Cate Kennedy explores how grief can play out after the end of a relationship. Denoting feelings of deep sadness, grief is most commonly associated with the sorrow one experiences after a loved one passes away. However, Kennedy expands that typical association to include the pain of losing a loved one through a breakup. After Rebecca’s partner leaves her, she feels further isolated by her friends who offer her cheap platitudes for her pain (“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”) during this difficult period in her life. As Rebecca moves through various stages of grief due to her breakup—like isolating herself from others or denying that her ex is really gone for good—Kennedy suggests that grieving the loss of a partner at the end of a relationship can be as pointed and complex a process as losing someone through death.
While losing a partner through a breakup might not be as permanent as losing them through death, Rebecca’s ex-partner made it very clear that he doesn’t want her in his life. Because of this, there is a sense of finality to their breakup—her ex might not be dead, but it’s unlikely she’ll ever see him or speak to him again. Rebecca remembers her ex telling her in a “clipped and guarded” tone, “I think it’s pointless considering mediation at this stage. I think it would be best to make a clean break.” Regardless of how Rebecca thought the relationship was going, her ex-partner shut down the possibility of talking it through: “I think it’s clear to both of us it’s not working.” With this, Rebecca’s ex swiftly pulled the plug on their relationship, stamping out any hope of mending things between them. Once he’s moved out, Rebecca’s ex-partner does everything in his power to make sure Rebecca can’t contact him again, essentially erasing all traces of himself from her life. She notes, “It takes a special kind of thoroughness, a particular grim determination to sever all ties, for him to redirect even his superannuation statements and subscriptions to his new address.” The language in this passage—particularly “thoroughness,” “grim,” and “sever all ties”—paints the breakup like a death, tragic and final. Rebecca continues, adding, “Even the mail he would have thrown away immediately never arrives now, suggesting he’d do anything rather than leave a single excuse for re-contact.” Rebecca’s ex-partner effectively makes himself dead to her, ensuring that she can never reach him again.
Grappling with the shock of her loss, Rebecca desperately searches for answers that would explain why they broke up—one of many iterations of her grief. At the beginning of the story, Rebecca explains, “I don’t know about you, but I don’t need to talk. I need someone else to talk. I need answers.” Given that Rebecca’s partner was not interested in talking through the breakup—instead simply announcing that “it’s not working”—it seems that Rebecca doesn’t really understand why he left her (or found his reasons unsatisfactory) and is now looking for “an explanation that makes sense” to gain some closure.
Overwhelmed by her loss, Rebecca feels like nobody understands her pain, and she becomes increasingly isolated. Rebecca is critical of “people who tell you to get out and move on” after a breakup, depicting their advice as thoroughly unhelpful. Rather than offering her empathy, people feed her “easy clichés like something off a desk calendar,” like “Living well is the best revenge” which do nothing to help her grief. She notes that there is a “queue” of these kinds of text messages on her phone, including lots of offers to call if she needs to talk—but Rebecca is adamant that this is the last thing she needs and thus lets these messages pile up. Rebecca feels like her grief over her breakup is taken less seriously than actual bereavement, but that this shouldn’t be the case. She explains, “Your partner dies, and everyone comes over with casseroles; they clean your house and hang out your washing. Your partner leaves though, and you don’t need nurturing apparently; you need avoiding.” Of course, Rebecca is at this point wearing “unwashed pyjamas” and eating a cup of microwavable noodles, suggesting that she does need things like casseroles and someone to help her with laundry. With this, Rebecca again suggests that dealing with the aftermath of a breakup is a lot like grieving a death, even if other people don’t see it that way.
Rebecca’s grief also manifests as denial. Unable to come to terms with the fact that the relationship is over, she tries to convince herself that there’s a chance they will reconcile. Feeling helpless, Rebecca tries to regain control of the situation by fantasizing about various “what-if” scenarios about her ex-partner. In these fantasies, she wants to overtake him in a cross-country running race, winning him over with her running abilities and confidence. She comes up with several iterations of these fantasies, culminating in one particular fantasy in which her ex-partner calls her up and asks her to dinner so they can talk, implying that they’ll get back together.
Throughout the story, Rebecca’s grief manifests itself in all sorts of ways, from isolation to denial, but she ultimately comes to a begrudging acceptance that the relationship is over, and that, “ready or not, it’s time to roll the credits.” As Rebecca makes her way through the grieving process, Kennedy suggests that grieving a breakup is not all that different than grieving the death of a loved one: both cases involve a significant, heart-wrenching loss, a multi-layered grieving process, and an uncomfortable period of adjusting to one’s “new normal” after acceptance has set in.
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Breakups and Grief Quotes in Cross-Country
Peeled. That’s how you feel, when it happens. Flayed. People who tell you to get out and move on, they’re standing there in a thick layer of skin, cushioned and comfortable, brimming with their easy clichés like something off a desk calendar. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger […] You were too good for him anyway. There’s a queue of their text messages on my phone. Call anytime, they say, if you need to talk.
It’s not as if I’m going to go over there, drive past his house, lie on his lawn drunk and make a scene, harass him. It’s just a few shreds of information I want. I supported him for a year, after all; surely I have a right to know whether he’s finally submitted that thesis and where, incidentally, the graduation ceremony is going to be held. If he’s joined a church group or a golf club, I need to paste that into my new identikit. I’ll take any crumb, any trail, any vague lead.
I don’t know why they call it surfing. They should call it drowning.
Down through the layers of US family-tree pages and rambling travel blogs of dull strangers, I hit paydirt at last. My heart knocks in my chest. I find he’s attended a conference but not presented a paper there. Thesis still unfinished, then. Too many emotional upheavals. His thoughts too scattered after a traumatic breakup, distracted by guilt and second thoughts. I’m settling into this train of thinking, hungry for its possibilities […]
It’s ten past four. Jittery with caffeine and MSG, I snoop in the desk drawer Google has no qualms about throwing open for me. He’s way down the ladder: coming thirty-fourth. That must be humbling. Thirty-fourth in a field of what—fifty or so? That would make anyone feel like a nameless nobody in a crowd, face blurry in the back of someone else’s photo, reduced to nothing but pixels.
‘See, you can reduce all this to just a system of binaries,’ I remember him explaining […] ‘Just infinite combinations of zero and one.’ I wonder if he understands that better now, struggling home in the middle of the pack. How it feels to be rendered, finally, to those low-resolution dots of shadow and light, a conglomeration made up of nothing and one.
See, this is the difference. Your partner dies, and everyone comes over with casseroles; they clean your house and hang out your washing. Your partner leaves, though, and you don’t need nurturing apparently; you need avoiding. Your washing grows mouldy in the machine, your friends who told you that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger look at you uneasily, taking in your greasy hair and unwashed pyjamas, and leave you to go back to bed at 5p.m. Impossible to explain to them the humming, welcoming warmth of the screen later, the peaceful blue light, the endless possibility of an explanation that would make sense.
