What I Can Do When We Break Up

I can be mad at you, unreasonably angry. I can wonder how you can love someone with all your heart, cradle their body against yours and create an aggregate of biology, and then just suddenly…not. I can rehash this strange concept in my head and hate you completely and sincerely, sit shaking in my room with the curtains drawn and wonder blindly about the meaning of words; wonder if you ever meant it, if you meant it at the time, if you just lied to me and never meant it. I’ll make myself feverish with the thinking but know underneath it that no, you weren’t lying, you did mean it at the time and now you don’t. And that will be the saddest thing.

I can make myself sick in every way I can think of. Drink too much, vomit bile, mute my thoughts with downers; burn through countless packs of cigarettes to keep my hands from shaking, curl up close my eyes and rub out the dull headache. I can singlehandedly damage my biochemistry and make myself crazy, hope you’re still cosmically connected to me in some way and will try to reach out though I know you won’t. I can throw empty words out into the void and ask it weakly, repeatedly, what the point was in the first place.

I can blame you for the death of us even though I know full well it takes two to make a relationship flourish or fall apart and I’m just as responsible, maybe it was more my fault than yours or maybe we’re like oil and water, unable to mix even with the best of intentions, who knows and who cares. I can know this and recite it to myself earnestly, appeal to myself with logic and attempt to believe it and feel absolutely no difference. Feel frustrated that I’m able to convince anyone of anything except myself.

I can try to make you understand how much you hurt me, sweat over long detailed texts you won’t answer and see you everywhere, see your face in every passing one and hallucinate your hands in my hair with the wind. I can stop taking care of myself completely, stop caring stop eating and make sure to run into you looking malnourished and disheveled, eye makeup purposely smudged to make my exhaustion visible. I can order your favorite whiskey every time even though I hate it and wonder if you’re thinking about me at that exact moment, cheers to your memory. I can insist to you that you feel the same way I do you’re just too scared to realize and listen intently as you explain that I’m wrong, listen that way without hearing the words.

I can hyperventilate, chain smoke, take long aimless drives; write bad poetry, cry all over it, tear it to pieces; feel genuine regret, learn to pray, try to change myself into what I think you might want. I can project all that energy out into the universe, the despair and the helplessness and blind fury of it, tell you I love you over and over until the words don’t have meaning anymore, and so? It will be like trying to move a mountain with an eyelash with staggering fatigue. It will change completely nothing.

I can do all that or I can just stop bullsh-tting myself. I know I can run the post-break up script as well as the next wounded girl, recite the lines with all the dedicated tunnel vision of heartbreak and make myself feel like the worst kind of person, but should I? I can do that or I can just stop; keep nourishing my pain or snap my vertebrae straight and leave you in the past where you fell. I can shed my delicate skin and grow armor, feel safe in my own arms and learn to forget without forgiving. I can blot out the heart-puncturing memories, turn the page or buy a new book because memories only mean something if you let them. I can keep searching for happiness on the outside, keep trying to squeeze a hacked puzzle piece into the negative space of my heart, or I can stop viewing myself as inherently incomplete and become my own reason to smile.