If Your Heartbreak Felt Like Mine

I wonder if everyone’s heartbreak feels the same. I swear I feel mine with my whole mind, soul, and body. My stomach drops, just like the way it does when your cart tips over the top of a roller coaster, but in the very worst way. It’s like this surge of adrenaline as you plummet down—with full knowledge of your velocity but no power to stop it.

I swallow hard, trying to force the ever expanding lump in my throat, because I’m too strong to cry but too weak to be vulnerable. There’s something so unnatural about sharing a part of your soul with someone, and then watching them fade away. There’s just something that makes you wither when you think about doing life without a person who had become a fixture to your daily existence. A morning text was as natural as brushing your teeth and washing your face, and there’s this hollow space that forms in your routine when you wake up without it.

Sure, you can choose to forget them, but somehow they still manage to show up.

He was there in the indie music at the rock wall, floating out of the speakers and haunting me until I had to race to the bathroom, walking fast and far far away, until the sound was drowned in the distance, and blocked by the sheltering stone walls and quite, glossy tile floors.

He was there on the paths on campus when that stranger just had to wear that blue dress shirt I’d bought him for his birthday. He’s there in my room, where the frames are tipped over, still filled with smiling pictures, just incase we change our minds. He’s there on my couch when I stumble upon one of our shows, when I’d do anything to reach out and hold his hand and argue over FIFA or Four Weddings.

He shows up in my conversations, when my friends use one of his favorite catch phrases. And he’s there in my closet, that big old grey hoodie I won’t wear but won’t wash because it still smells like his cologne.

I’m mad when he texts me, but hurt when he doesn’t. I’ve unfollowed and unfriended him because it hurts to see him smiling without me, but I’m still using his Netflix account because it helps me forget him by numbing my thoughts, but still lets me share something with him.

Broken hearts aren’t like cuts, their pain certainly isn’t temporary; they don’t heal over night, and they aren’t visible like deserving battle wounds. Well, mine aren’t anyway. You won’t see a subtweet, you won’t hear a complaint, and if you ask, I’ll say, “I’m fine, thanks for asking!” Then I’ll smile really big and I’ll shake him out of my head by asking you a thousand questions.

I’ll care for others to forget myself…does that make me selfish?

Broken hearts are like Tetnis shots, invisible pain that hurts in the moment, seem fine when you’re busy, but comes back in pangs and pulses when you thought you’d healed or forgotten. Broken hearts suck the air right out of my lungs and steal my appetite from my stomach, and as much as I want to hate him, I love him.

Nothing will take the hope from my heart while I wait here, crossing my fingers for a grand gesture I’ll never tell him I want.