Avril Lavigne, I’m Coming

Six years. Six years of sustained metaphysical effort—the voodoo, the black cats, the late-night bargaining with forces I don’t believe in—and it finally worked: Avril Lavigne is single.

She posted about it herself. Twenty-four years old, newly separated from Deryck Whibley—Sum 41 frontman, her husband of three years—and handling it with more grace than anyone had a right to expect. She wrote that she still thinks he’s the best person she knows and respects him completely. Which is exactly what people say right before they stop feeling that way, but I’ll take it.

I’ve been in love with Avril Lavigne since before I had a good reason to be. There was something about the way she arrived in 2002—the tie, the eyeliner, the complete refusal to be whatever pop was asking girls to be that year—that hit differently if you were a certain kind of teenager. Complicated still holds up. Not ironically, not nostalgically. Just actually holds up.

That celebrity relationships between two touring, recording, permanently public people rarely survive a few years isn’t a revelation. What’s interesting is how little the failure surprises anyone, including apparently them. There’s something almost honest about a split that arrives without a war, just a quiet acknowledgment that the situation has changed.

Whether this is genuine or a setup for a new album cycle doesn’t change anything for me. The bag is metaphorically packed and the intention is sincere. Avril Lavigne, I’m coming.