I Don’t Miss You Anymore

My worst habit is pressing on emotional bruises to see if they still hurt. I listening to the songs we used to think were about us and I push my fingers down on the purple and yellow you-shaped bruise on my heart. I think about the times you surprised me, when you took my hand in the middle of our fight and told me you liked everything about me and I realize what hurts the most now is the times we laughed so hard we fell over.

It’s a different kind of pain to realize I don’t miss you anymore. It hurt to not be over you, to love you unrequitedly, but I sustained myself on the idea that it was okay for it to be so hard to move on because what we had was something that shouldn’t be easy to move on from. I found meaning in my weakness. It was out of my hands, less my fault and more cosmic proof that you and I, we were something else. We were supposed to be something else. So if i’m sitting here and the songs that used to re-break my heart not so long ago feel like a sad slow poke instead of the six punches to the gut that i’m used to, then how can I think whatever we had held the weight I thought I did?

I laid on the ground clutching myself only comforted by the fact that if I was hurting so deeply, I must have been loving so deeply. If I was keeping myself small for you, it was because your world was worth fitting into. You were supposed to be the one that was wrong. Maybe we would never work out, but you would think of me and how my heart swelled when you grabbed my hand and if you had stepped in my affection you could have drowned in it, and it would have been worth every day I was too sad to even brush my hair and every tear-stained night, for just one sharp pang as you laid in bed five years in the future you could be sure was regret.

You made the hurt a place I could live within comfortably, because it was all I had left of you and if I squinted and turned my head the right way, it was still you. You gave me a lot of pain, but you also gave me certainty. I could stop looking, I could give up, at first because I had found you and then because I’d lost you.

But here we are. My heart healed faster than I was ready for, I’m stronger than I’m comfortable with and the idea of how good my body is adjusting to being alone makes me scared it’s my natural permanent state. I don’t miss you anymore and when I look at the plastic bracelet you didn’t know meant the world to me when you gave it to me, it doesn’t mean anything. I don’t miss you anymore and when I get stuck in an elevator with a boy that wears the same cologne as you, the idea of jumping up through the panes of the elevator and shimmying up the ropes just to get away from the memories isn’t as enticing as it once was. The only thing I miss is thinking you were someone worth missing. I miss believing in something so much. I press on the emotional bruise and the pain is dull and withering, and you are far away.