I was out the other night with some friends. Tight high waisted jeans. A new blonde do. Killer heels. Lips coated in burgundy looking like they could taste like cherries. I'd been knocking back tequila shots. I was feeling some kind of way.
I noticed one of the most beautiful men I had seen in a long time waiting in line at the bar with his dog. He was sexy in this non-generic kind of way. A little rugged but with this impeccable wavy sandy hair. All I could think about was disheveling it, running my fingers through it, tugging at it as I pulled him closer to myself.
We kept exchanging glances. My best friend demanded I walk over to this stranger and introduce myself. I almost did, but then he came back to haunt me. I gripped my drink harder. All I could do was stay still.
I don't think much of my ex these days. In fact, since I left I don't think I ever looked back. I didn't just shut the door and throw away the key. I burned the whole building down. He hardly ever makes appearances in my writing. He's not a topic of conversation that ever comes up with anybody. It's like he's this character I faintly remember from some book I read.
This isn't to say he didn't hurt me. This isn't to say I never loved him. This isn't to say I never hated him. It's just that some things hurt too much to revisit. It's just that some graves are left better untended without fresh bouquets.
The thing is, after drinking so much of the same venom you become immune to it. After having your throat slit so often by the same blade, its edge starts to become dull. After someone has bit one too many times into your neck, you no longer feel it when they sink in their teeth.
After they've hurt you one too many times, you no longer feel anything.
I was a different person before him. I was a ghost of who I was when I was with him. I'm someone else entirely after him.
In a life in which my heart wasn't all scar tissue and all bruise, I would have never thought twice about walking up to and flirting shamelessly with a stranger. I would be a lot like my old self. But I live in a world in which every part of me once loved him, and in which he always loved breaking pretty things.
He was all soft when I met him. My wrists were still bleeding and everything inside me was once again heavy. He made me feel like I wasn't lonely. Back then he was something sweet my tongue could savor. He was something like Eden in the beginning.
I had no idea that his softness was just a projection of what he saw in me. A kind of tenderness he could rip apart and feast on. I had no idea he'd draw more blood and would wind up making me feel more alone than on my own. That the sweetness would come at a price and only during times he wanted to reel me back in. After all, the garden of Eden did disappear.
I try to remember at what point in time I slipped out of my own body and let a man dictate my emotions, my perception of myself, whether I was happy or unhappy. I can't. I don't know when it happened. I just know that I was a confident, intelligent, self-assured, maybe at times depressed, but still a vibrant girl, and then I wasn't. I was someone who always spoke her mind, someone who never backed down in fear of a fight, someone who held her ground, and then one day I was reaching for my throat wondering where I had misplaced my voice. I became highly insecure. I questioned my worth. I doubted my thoughts and my feelings, and even their rationality. I became more anxious. I fell into depression more than I had in the past.
I looked in the mirror and didn't recognize myself one day. I actually stared at the tear-stained, mascara infested face staring back at me and uttered the words, "I don't know who you are anymore." I remember that night vividly. After months of cheating on me, after years of him calling me a psycho bitch and making me doubt my sanity, I actually begged the man who'd let my heart drop and shatter underneath someone else's bed (again) to stay. I actually apologized to him.
