When we met, I didn’t know how much I was going to love you.
You were just another guy that I prepared myself for. Just another guy who was going to screw me over and leave me hanging.
Or at least…that’s what you were at first.
I fell in love with you. Just like John Green said, it happened the way I fell asleep – slowly, and then all at once.
I went from thinking that you weren’t going to matter to me to wondering how I was going to live without you in the matter of a second.
And then you did the unthinkable: You broke my heart.
I cried. Oh lord, did I cry.
I spent the better part of a few days holed up in my bedroom with sappy romance movies and shitty Chinese food, watching Noah and Allie fall in love in spite of the odds and wondering how you managed to break my heart even when the odds were in our favor.
And then I did what I had to in order to survive.
I pulled myself out of bed, put on sweatpants and mocassin slippers with oversized tee shirts even though I swore I would never go out in public like that.
I went through my daily life in a zombie-like trance. I hung out with friends and the memories of those days are clouded in a haze of forgotten sadness.
I forced smiles to the baristas who handed me my morning coffee. I pretended that I was okay.
I traded in my sweatpants for jeans and the slippers I’d been wearing for my favorite pair of boots.
I put on shirts that clung to my curves in the best possible way. I remembered that makeup always made me feel powerful and so I started out small, with foundation and mascara. I tried to remember how to be myself.
And now I am doing what I want to: I am not letting the memory of you let me forget what it meant to be me.
It will take time, because you can’t just erase a feeling and no matter what anyone tells you, there is no easy cure for a broken heart.
There will be days when I don’t want to get out of bed because what if I run into you? Will my fragile heart be able to stand seeing you in person? What if you’re with someone else, hand grasping hers the way that you used to grasp mine? But I will push through.
You might have shattered me. You might have been the one who got out of this unscathed in spite of my insistance that I will not let myself get heartbroken over some guy in a snapback.
I will never forget what we had, but I will forget the way that it broke me in the end. I will forget that you let me go even though you said that I was the best thing that had ever happened to you.
You might have won the battle…but I will win the war.
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