When You Ruin Yourself Before He Does

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The spaces he once filled in your life have been replaced by piles of bones he dismantled you into.

He said he was going to fix you, build you back up again – but it’s been three months and he still hasn’t come back. Tissues are stacking and your life is slowly snapping. Every time you awaken from your slumber, surges of threatening nostalgia come in large tides to drown you, yet you continue to greet the memories of him like an old friend. You let them pack your lungs more and more – until you are being weighed down completely, and you have lost yourself in an abyss.

Every day is a constant battle in your head. Did I let him in too easily? Am I too attached? What is wrong with me? Is he thinking about me too? But he isn’t – he has found someone else, yet you still can’t shake off the feeling you got when you first met him. The lightness in your stomach which made you feel as dizzy as a merry-go-round, the butterflies which fluttered around your stomach in a chaotic frenzy, even the teenage fever you caught.

What if I never forget him? This is your only thought. What if I carry on screaming, begging my phone to reveal a notification from him? What if I spend my life ripping my throat to shreds in denial? What if he forgets me before I forget him? The answer is, you followed the rabbit down the hole, Alice. You ruined yourself more than he could ever ruin you and you didn’t even realize it because you had blocked every nerve in your body. You had allowed yourself to fall back into your own depression so quickly that you reached terminal velocity and allowed every inch of the skin he touched, to be torn away into shreds.