II

Once there was a girl.
She used to wear her heart on her sleeve but she almost lost it once so she started wearing it on a string around her neck instead.
She was happy. Or trying to be.
One time the girl met a boy.
His smile was whimsical. His hair was perfect.

The boy yanked the string around her neck so hard that her heart was shattered all over the place.
She is still trying to find all the pieces.

instructions

You know what to do.

You've been here before.

It's not like you don't know what to do. Just go through the steps.

Reboot.

Reset.

Brush off the dust.

Pick up the pieces.

Band aid your heart. (Be careful with the areas where the scar tissue is still recent, they may be sensitive to the touch)

Mend it.

Patch it up.

Nurse it.

With music.

With friends.

With laughter.

With forgiveness.

With softness. 

Try not to think that you did this.

Try not to be convinced that you caused this, that of course you caused this, that this would happen to you. Again.

Breathe.

Cry.

Breathe deeper.

Think it. Feel it. But don't think about it. Don't dwell.

Don't hang around waiting for the phone to ring.

Don't check your email every other second.

Don't take a trip down memory lane.

Don't ask why.

Step back.

Move away.

Remove yourself from the equation.

Be still.

Stay easy.

Give away your love in every possible way and to anyone who can possibly take it. (It is not doing anything remaining stagnant inside you and it does not run out.)

And pray to whatever god, entity, or being you believe in for a little hand.

Be grateful for everything. Even the tears and the heart-wrenching, soul-crushing moments. They are all a part of our history. I used to regret having allowed myself to enter a recent situation that left me devastated and torn. I used to beat myself up over not having had the clarity to come out of it alive when I still had that life in me. But then one of my friends said something that rang a little bell of truth in me- regardless of the outcome, regardless of the person being or not deserving of it, what you feel is beautiful. What you feel is noble. It is one of the noblest things you can feel for anyone and it comes from the highest part of yourself. I loved. I was capable, I am capable of loving. Wholly. Truthfully. Grandly. This is nothing short of amazing. I do not regret, not for one second, one single instant of my tragic love story. Just because it was a love story. Just because despite everything I can still look back and look at that person who treated me so unfairly and hurt me so miserably and I can still find the highest of feelings for them. All I keep, despite the odds, despite the evident train wreck, is the warmth, the tenderness, the not-altogether-unpleasant feeling of wanting to squeeze the life out of him just for being so adorable. This is what I choose to remember. This is what I choose to keep. The way he was standing waiting for me on our first date. The way his hair curled softly from under his wooly hat. The way he was uncomfortable and standoffish around me and didn’t know what to do with his hands so kept shoving them in his pockets. The lanky way he walked. The way he grunted. His husky voice. The way he said I won the game and I’m thinking of you. His skin. The way he smelled of soap and fresh laundry and sweat and mud and grass in his windbreaker and shorts. His smile was perfect. He filled me in every way. Except when he didn’t. Except when the times that he didn’t started being more frequent than the times that he did. Except when he disappeared and I never heard from him again except for a nasty anger-filled email that came from a place that I did not know in him.
But this is not what I keep. What I keep is the memory of the person who I still defend, who I still talk about with a twinkle in my eye, who I still admit , confess, half-ashamed, half-not, to owning my heart and think “I hope one day you realize you still love me and want me back”. What I keep is this knowledge that, when said aloud, makes my friends look alarmingly at each other and down a glass of tequila in one sitting.

I grew up the day I turned thirty. This is true. Up until then I had been an overgrown teenager, but I truly became an adult when I turned thirty. This, of course, I hate to admit. This, of course, I would rather not admit, especially since I had always thought of myself as having had a rather grown-up life. I will go even further and say that I was even slightly smug about how grown up my life had been. I had a baby when I was twenty. I decided not to stay with my baby’s father. I did the single mom thing. I got a boyfriend. A few years later I married the boyfriend. I decided I did not want to be married anymore. I left. Despite all this, I was still freakishly optimistic about life and men and relationships. I was still embarrassingly wide-eyed and hopeful. I still believed the world was mine to take and all its possibilities were there for me to discover. Then I got a new boyfriend. Then I turned thirty. All in the same year. And that was the year that I finally grew up.
The reason why I finally grew up was the fact that I suffered my first real heartbreak. Don’t get me wrong, I was never the cool vixen-type woman who wraps men around her fingers and is always in control of her emotions. Nothing could be further from the truth. I was always an emotional hazard, a victim of unrealistic ideals and an overzealous imagination. I was always one to surrender whole-heartedly to relationships. I always entered into one like it would be my last, from the guy who first kissed me to the guy I eventually did vow to make my last. I was always one to love completely, never holding anything back, and things have always struck me to the core. Curiously though, all my relationships naturally ran their course. Some more painfully (or painlessly) than others, but when they ended it was always because their time had run out. Or my time in them had run out. Whichever way, I was always pretty good at closure. At sorting out unfinished business. When things ended, they ended, and once an acceptable amount of time passed and tempers cooled and dust settled, I eagerly moved on. Too eagerly maybe.
My first real heartbreak was devastating. Nothing short of a nuclear disaster of the soul. It erased me off the face of my own planet. It was the first time that I did not get to choose the ending. It was the first time I was not allowed to wait it out. It started and then it was over – just like that. I was in a relationship with the love of my life and then I was not. End of story. And I had no say in it whatsoever.
In the attempt of trying to make sense of this experience which violently shattered my conceptions of love, relationship, and the pursuit of happiness I have decided to write. I decided to write because I need to know that it makes sense. I need to accept that it happened because it had to, because some things need so badly to happen to us that we cannot keep them from coming, even with all the positive thinking and upbeat attitude in the world. I need to believe that I did not cause this. That it wasn’t something I did, even if unconsciously. I need to believe that it was a wake-up call, a slap in the face, or something that I must have needed very very urgently for some reason, even if I don’t entirely understand what that reason is yet.

half

People aren’t whole people anymore.
They’re half people.
Half in, half out.
They half want you but they half don’t.
One half likes the idea but the other half can’t deal with the logistics.
They mean half of what they say and don’t do half of what they mean.
They turn back halfway down the road.
They leave things half-said halfway through.
And the two halves, they don’t communicate. They don’t even speak the same language. So one half doesn’t even realize (except maybe somewhere really deep inside…) that there’s another half and that the two of them could make a whole. And since each half is blind and deaf to the other half people go about their business, perfectly oblivious, thinking they are whole.
In their obvious halfness, they think they are whole.
So they shrug their shoulders.
And they brush the dust off.
Casually. Nonchalantly.
Because when you’re half a person I guess it’s easy to only deal with half the stuff and only carry half the heartache.
(Especially when you get to choose which half to carry.)

Ghosts

I still think about him and my face lights up. I still feel like I belong to him and like he belongs to me and every time I leave the house or get ready to go anywhere it’s like I am going out to meet him, or I will casually bump into him or he’ll call me when I’m halfway there (wherever that is) and we’ll catch up with each other at some point in the day. I feel like I am constantly on the verge of seeing him, or in-between something else and seeing him. I still half-expect him to call at random hours, still half-anticipate receiving half-written SMSs that I can’t quite decipher. I still very much feel him in me and around me all the time, I feel his presence constantly hovering around me in such a strangely palpable way that it just makes it even more inconceivable that he’s cut off all ties with me, that much more inconceivable that he’s probably gone for good. Sometimes I think maybe I’m still in denial.
But I can’t be in denial.
I’ve already cried so much over this, been distraught and disheveled and heart-wrenchingly broken over this.
I’ve gotten up and broken down again. And again. And again.
I’ve said everything I had to say only to discover I had a whole lot more to say and then I said that too.
I’ve dealt with it. I’ve done it. There is nothing inside left to hurt me, just the swollen, tender and bruised remains of a devastating heartache. But that will go with time, they say. Even that will go with time. There’s nothing that won’t go away with time once you’ve released it.
This, what I feel now, is the ghost of what was. It’s a holographic haze that feels real but is actually empty. These are phantom pains.

I

Once there was a girl. She used to wear her heart on her sleeve but she almost lost it once so she started wearing it on a string around her neck instead.
She was happy. Or trying to be.
One time the girl met a boy.
His smile was whimsical.
His hair was perfect.