How New York City Healed My Broken Heart

You left. I didn’t want you to. I moved. I wanted to. I wanted to not see you around every corner. I wanted you to not take over every room I was in. These places were mine, yet to me, you owned them. When saw my room, I didn’t see my bed, I saw the bed we shared. When I saw the couch, I didn’t see the couch I laughed at dumb movies with my roommate on, I saw the couch we looked into each other’s eyes on. When I saw my kitchen, I didn’t see the fun nights I had with friends, I saw you and I crying knowing we were saying goodbye.

I moved. I wanted to. I had to. Now, three years later, in a different city, in a different place…I still see you. Just in a different way. I moved to New York City to get away from you, yet still, around every corner…I see you. I see places you would love. I see myself acting in a way you used to love; I see what could have been. I have become the person I wanted to be, I have become the best things you saw in me that I didn’t see in myself. I, ironically, became the person you kept telling me I was. Strong, beautiful, independent. In spite of you…because of you…in order to get over you.

The second I felt the strength to be without you is the second you decided you didn’t. The second I became that person you saw so adoringly in your eyes…the second I believed it and knew that someone else, besides you, would see it too…is the second you, somehow, had to remind me of you. My lack of contact somehow prompted you to text pictures of our old haunts, or old memories, our old love. No matter what I did, you just had to invade my life. My new life. My life without you. My life I made for myself, in spite of you.

No matter how much I ignored you, determined to be the person I knew I wanted to be here, you kept pushing. Ten texts unanswered, months apart, apparently held no significance to you. Each text, each voicemail, tempting me to fall back into your love, to fall back into you. My heart would race every time my phone buzzed. Praying it wasn’t you but secretly praying it was. Each text and each voicemail reminding me…you don’t deserve it. You don’t deserve my adoration. You don’t deserve my sympathy, and you sure as hell don’t deserve my heart. You had all of those things, along with my earth shattering love, my soul, my being.

You asked to come visit me. The old me wouldn’t have even hesitated. I would have said yes in a heartbeat. The new me, the New York me, said no. You have already tainted everything in my life. The dishes you bought me, the frames, the clothes, and the parts of my heart that were untouched. You’ve touched them all…you don’t get to have New York City. That’s mine. I get this city.

This city that has brought life back into me. This city that has brought air back into my lungs. This city that has made me feel more alive in three minutes, than I have in three years. I didn’t think I would ever fall in love again after you, but I have fallen all over. Every time I walk out of my apartment and see 50 different people in 50 seconds, every time I am out until 5am and the city is still alive, every time I walk down the street and I break into a smile thinking ‘god, I love this city’, I remember that there are parts of my heart that you haven’t touched.