I Lost A Part Of Myself With Him That I’m Still Looking For
I owe it to myself to try and find her again, be her, and give her back to everyone else.
Quiet. That’s how people typically describe me when they meet me. Even after I’ve spoken to them for at least an hour, I am still “soft-spoken”. I was not this girl at one time, I was once someone that knew what she wanted when she wanted it, and a strong sense of self. So, as I sit here picking away at my raw cuticle, I can’t help but take these newly printed labels that are so crudely slapped on me, as an insult.
It’s so strange the way I can look at pictures of myself just seven plus months ago and not recognize the cheeky, dimpled blonde in them with her friends. Last summer proved to be the basis for a majority of these kinds of photos: glossy images of this girl with wild hair that humidity had a way of curling just right, frosted glasses filled with colored drinks, tan arms. And at some point they stop all at the time where the new trouble starts.
Somewhere floating in a wasteland, what once completed the array of summer shenanigans, torn up pieces from a photo of a brunette boy with deep blue eyes next to the dimpled blonde in a dimly-lit bar. Bright smiles making up for the lack of lighting. Mischief in either pair of eyes are a tally for the drinks consumed that night. Another picture to accompany this image crumpled into a ball, the remnants of the same two, the boy holding the girl from behind in a bathroom mirror while kissing her cheek, blonde holding toothbrush in hand, hair in bun, a freshly-washed face clean of makeup, and echoes of the giggled protests against the picture being taken. Flip to the scene of the blonde clenching tightly to blue eyes on the back of a motorcycle, and ice cream cones to follow that road trip.
When I am being “shy” as people often like to name me, these are the typical frames rolling through my head, like an old movie, flickering like flames, burning my insides a little more each time. At some point I lost myself into those eyes that screamed trouble, the blue ones I didn’t realize I’d drown in like a pool without a surface. They say time heals all wounds, so why does it feel like it was just yesterday that I laid on my floor with mascara streaming down my cheeks over the guy who changed his mind about me, and only after I had given him everything?
The dumper, the one who didn’t text back, the one who walked away with the last word. And suddenly all of this snatched away in less than a month. Seven months later, I still am oozing heart break from every pore of my skin. Smiling only to feel sad moments later, laughs only hollow. I walk around feeling lost like the shell of myself, the insides are missing. And now I’m left to deal with this, and I’ve been doing everything but that.
So here is my official promise to the girl in those pictures before those blue eyes came along and tore everything apart. I owe it to myself to try and find her again, be her, and give her back to everyone else. I fell out of love with her, and I need to fall back into it instead of trying to find love in other bodies, only to hurt them in the process. I will eventually be able to look in the mirror and recognize myself, I want to become someone I’m proud of, and I can’t do that when I’m letting myself be ripped apart by the past. To my old self, I am so sorry I let you go, but please know, I’m going to try my best to get you back. 
