How To Stop Eating Chinese Food and Be Okay Again

{A Chronicle of Moving On}

I think about you. So much.

Too much.

Your absence beckons me to the amber bottles lined up on the bottom shelf of the fridge. Not because I want to drink and forget you, but because the sting of alcohol mimicks the burning of your lips on mine after you ate those hot peppers you love. I don't know how you stand them. I've always been a baby when it comes to spice. Sometimes black pepper is too much for me. You always laughed at me for my intolerance.

Speaking of your lips, they haunt me. What are they doing now? Are they pursed as you scan a menu in a restaraunt and do they curve in a smirk as you say the word ricotta and remember once when I tried to cook that very dish for you and caught my favorite shirt on fire?

Are they half pressed against the rim of a glass as you sip the red wine your date ordered? Do they form a tight line as you swallow it down with a grimace that you hide with your hand as you pretend to chuckle? You never liked wine, red or white. I didn't mind because we never ate out anywhere nice anyways. You were satisfied with the Chinese takeout from three blocks down and two frosty Blue Moons any day.

Do you reapply a coat of deep burgundy over them when you duck into the bathroom as he pays the check at the table? Money always made you uncomfortable. I bet they still press together in guilt as you think about how much the meal cost. We never fought about money; you avoided the topic like the plague, so I took care of the bills when we lived together.

Are your lips crushed against his as you kiss him good night at the steps to your building, your hands sliding from his neck to his hair, your fingers splaying? Do they part as you breathe into his mouth, the heat from your bodies shared so intimately in that moment? Does the passion infused in your skin fill you with excitement? Does he make you feel whole?

You made me feel whole. I hate myself in this moment, in my wondering, my stupid brain babbling scenarios based entirely on my own twisted imaginaton, driven by my insecurity, my loneliness.

I delete the playlists we made together. I delete all my music. I revert my iPod to factory settings. I wipe out everything on it. I sell it on Amazon. I drink not a Blue Moon, but a bottle of lemonade from the vending machine downstairs. I go to the park, walking the path backwards this time. It feels wrong at first, but soon it is as though this was the right way all along.

Six days pass. I drink a lemonade every day. I walk every day.

I buy a laptop on Tuesday. A Macbook Pro. Seeing the transaction recorded in my bank statement online somehow feels freeing. I laugh out loud, alone in the apartment.

I breathe different. I eat different, more greens like spinach and avocado, less noodles and wontons. I throw away the takeout menu that hung on the fridge for so long, all two years.

I put your favorite peppers in my basket when I go to the grocery store. I watch them as they move across the couter of the check-out station, through the cashier's calloused hands, and into the white plastic bags. I throw them away when I get home. I open the window in the bedroom even though it's raining outside. The floor is wet when I wake up two hours later. I use the hair dryer you left to get rid of the spot. I throw away the dryer when I'm done. I take the trash down to the dumpster out back. I take the stairs back up, all five floors. I cry and turn on Wheel of Fortune to mask the noise from the neighbors. And from myself I suppose.

I hate crying.

I've lost weight. I feel taller sometimes, like when I walk down the street and everyone else looks shorter as they hustle by. Maybe I'm losing my mind. Maybe my body is telling me I'm getting better. That I can move on.