I sit on the floor, staring straight ahead. My mind has so many things on it that it feels like none. I lean my head back against the wall a little too hard, and savor the pain that bubbles up around the back of my head. I blink blink blink six times, trying to erase the words that keep popping to the front of my brain.

This

Beautiful

Amazing

Girl

She’s

Perfect.

I hit my head a few more times until I cloud my vision enough that I can’t make them out, but the sting is still there. I feel the wound in my heart reopen and throb painfully, open to the elements through the thin fabric of my shirt. The more I push it back, the more strongly it smashes into me, bringing with it waves of mental images that I had left suppressed deeply under layers and layers of It’s okay’s and I don’t care’s.

Let it in, My brain whispers ever so softly to me, the hurt sucks away the pain. I wonder if it’s right. If I wade out into the tide and let it take me away, will it stop?

The waves of emotion crash over me. Her body, his body, pink nail polish. Her lips on his lips, her hands on his abs, wrong wrong wrong. I suck in deeply, and let that feeling tear the hole in my heart wide open, let the air lick my wounds. I don’t want to keep going but I crave the anger that comes after, the bitter hatred that makes the hole close up so tight that nobody will ever make it in again.

His hands on her waist, her ass. The same hands that pushed hair behind my ear, that traced my face, that wrapped me in warm embraces, that tangled in my hair between long, sweet kisses. On her her her, touching her, wanting her; not me, never me. Hands that belonged to me, but a heart that never did.

I’m running as the familiar nausea overwhelms me, and I lean over porcelain and wretch until nothing else comes. Vomit up all the poison in my soul, between little whimpers of heartbroken desperation, then I lean back and I cry. I cry because it hurts and because he will never know how much it hurts and because it isn’t okay and it matters. I cry because I loved him so much and I was only ever temporary, and I cry because he was never mine, and the hole in my chest is so wide that it could swallow me. I cry because I was in love, because I feel stupid, because I feel like I little girl, and what’s been done is out of my control and I couldn’t stop it or change it or make it disappear, no matter how many times I tried to tell myself it was okay.

And when the tears stop coming, I get up. I wash my face with cold water and take a deep breath until I can swallow the rest of my sobs. I put my makeup back on. I wait for the red in my eyes to fade and all of this is so strikingly normal to me that I almost start crying all over again. I dig my fingernails into my palms and grit my teeth, I bite my lip and feel the familiar anger sweep over me, closing that hole so tight that not even a pinhead could make it through.

I will never put myself through this again, I tell myself, and I walk out without a backward glance, whispering in the back of my thoughts that love is ruthless and cruel.