Today I Decided To Let Myself Be Heartbroken

I fell apart today. I gave in.
I let the waves hit me
and I didn’t even dig my feet in.
I let it all wash over me
and pull me apart in
all the ways I feared
losing you would do.

I didn’t try to
prepare or give myself a
chance to breathe,
I just let myself shatter
on the ground because
here I am again,
wondering why all the things
I want to love
seem to end up here.

I know what happens to me-
all of the parts crack and fall,
scattering themselves
left and right,
I don’t move.
I just let them all fall as they want.

Yet every other time,
I’m always in a hurry to
put myself back together.
Perhaps out of pride,
Because I don’t want people to see the hurt.
Perhaps out of shame,
because I don’t want
the people I love to see me like this.
Perhaps out of desperation,
because this hurts and
all I want it to do
is anything but hurt.

So I run around
trying to pick up
the jagged pieces,
running with bare feet
over my glass heart,
transparent for the rest of the world.
I pick up others
with bare hands
and try to fit pieces
back together,
all the while cutting myself,
bleeding all over the place.

I just ignore it,
ignore that this isn’t healthy,
ignore that even if I successfully manage
to put me back together somehow,
my pain is still going to bleed
into the next new thing.
I always stain the next thing red
and pretend it’s all part of the process.

Today I decided to be different.
I’ve fallen apart,
but I’m staying this way
for a while.
Not because I want to live
in a pity party for myself,
not because I’m a masochist
who loves the pain,
but because maybe for once,
I need to take this slowly.
I’ve never examined
all of these broken shards,
and I need to get to know them.
I need to hold each one in my hand,
carefully, easily,
in a way that lets me know
exactly where it needs to be
placed to bring me back together again.

I’m falling apart and staying like this
so that maybe even if it takes a long time,
I’ll know when I build it back again
that it will be closer to what
I’m supposed to be,
instead of a haphazard shack
of what I’ve been lately.

I’ll put myself back together
one day.
Yet today,
on a Thursday,
I’ve fallen apart and
I’m letting myself staying this way.