This Is How I Know I’m Over You

It’s a funny thing, feeling nothing.

I thought I would be heartbroken for months. I thought it would take me a year to get over you. I thought I would be as torn up and forlorn as I was when the last person I dated ended things with me.

But here it is, over a month since you oh so eloquently told me, “I think you like me more than I like you” (which is so, totally every girl’s dream to hear), and I feel utterly nothing.

I don’t see you and want you back. I don’t look at you and feel my heart skip a beat. I don’t run into you and crave to do it all over again.

I see you and realize I have a lot going for me in life. I look at you and reaffirm that I won’t settle for anything, whether it’s a job, place I live, or person I am with. I run into you and feel thrilled when I leave, because I know my life is going in the direction I want.

All of these things take place in my mind. In my heart, there is nothing. The same lackluster, steady beat that happens every second of every day.

I worry if this might be detrimental towards me. That maybe I am just so done with dealing with any types of emotion that I’ve finally melted it all down to nothing. Maybe feelings just aren’t worth acknowledging at all. Maybe it’s easier to go through life not caring about other people. In love, if you care less, you win. Maybe I’ve just hit the lottery.

I feel this way about most men I meet, since you ended things. A slow, steady stream of nothing. But then, there have been some slip-ups. Blips on the radar that remind me I am still human, when I worry that all of this not caring is somehow going to wreck me for the rest of my life.

There was the man who, when I initially met him, was in a relationship. He became a friend and then suddenly, here he was in my apartment one year later telling me that he was no longer in said relationship and offering me compliments I never thought I would hear pouring out of his mouth. Not that that was a recipe for success, because when you put someone who just got out of a long-term relationship into a room with someone who isn’t quite sure what she wants, there’s bound to be some miscommunication and then some time needed apart.

There was the man whom I had spent the better part of last year daydreaming about; the one who I dressed up for and invited out to places I would be and asked constant questions and tried to learn more about his life so maybe he could see that something breathtaking might happen if we took a chance. This was the man I had given up on right before I met you. The man who I was content to be just friends with, because I had resigned to the fact that he would never put forth as much effort as I did. That was until I was standing next to him in the rain and his drunken self took it upon himself to kiss me. I wrote it off as a drunken experience, but I won’t say I didn’t think about it a few days later.

There was the man who I wasn’t sure how to talk to, because he was eons more shy than I was, and I don’t do particularly well with uncomfortable silences. But I clearly didn’t fumble too much, because we still make plans and I am still wound up about it.

There are small occurrences that remind me my heart has not completely died. It has shut off for a while, but it is just waiting for the right time to start up again.

There are so many of us out there that are waiting for their hearts to start again. And whether it is day one, day five hundred, or day thirty, trust yourself. Trust that your heart is in temporary hibernation and remind yourself of the things or people that rev it back up again, even if only for a moment.

I think of my heart as Peter Capaldi’s twelfth doctor. I’m not exactly sure what it is yet, but I trust it, and I know it will all work out in the end.

So no, I don’t look at you and get my heart broken all over again. I look at you and see all the possibilities I now have in my lifetime.