when i was younger, people used to tell me it was going to be different after-your-first-love. it has been. it's been easier, most of the time. i know who i am. i used to think it was romantic to say i gave him everything i am. now i know that the right people will not ask for that - they don't want to take from you, only to help you build. i used to think it was lonely, the way adults said we have our own lives. now i know what it is to have that other-life be separated - how wonderful, to have someone i can share with, and someone who celebrates my life and the way i have grown into it.

people said: after you have been hurt, it will be different.

this is true about most things, after all. my experiences were branded on my body. i don't talk about the scars, and you're too smart to ask, and we're both healing. i used to be able to do certain gymnastics tricks - but i fell once, and i haven't been able to get over the mental barrier since then.

the thing is - we learn these stop-measures because someone took advantage of us first. we learn how far is too far because someone forced us too-far. as a kid, i thought there is no too far was romantic. i didn't know better.

it took me a very long time to rebuild parts of my life after him. it took me a very long time to rebuild parts of my character. i think i probably still have rooms without any floors. places that only go down. ceilings full of spraypainted warnings.

i have been thinking about the ways new love comes in. and we crack open each sealed door together, one-at-a-time. and i hear myself in front of her, nervous, saying if you start a fire, please keep it contained in here, it's a place i can afford to lose.

and i hear her, time and time again, utterly confused: why would i do that? it's beautiful in here. i don't want to hurt you.

Sue Zhao

gotta be okay with this. i go to therapy. i do online pilates where women in tight pastels tell me to just have fun with it. i download another relaxation app.

sometimes i spend hours trying to find the words for it. how agonizingly angry i am. you fucked me up so badly. the worst part is that it wasn’t even about me. it was all to further your own story. i picture getting you in a room and holding a little slideshow party. now, on slide sixty, things are getting juicy,

the worst part is actually that i still find myself making excuses. you didn’t know what you were doing. the worst part is actually that i still stupidly love you, a little bit, in some sick kind of way. the worst part is actually -

gotta be okay. my mother says that the best revenge is a life well-lived. i meal-prep and start new projects and live as well as can be managed. 

and i’d just. forgotten about it. about him. about stuff that used to cause me to weep in supermarkets. stuff that was real.

but this is real too. this is more real, somehow. im more real, and more myself. my happiness is real. my life without him is real. 

and the song is just a song again. and my life is my own, and worth living.

how wonderful. i will love in a new way each time, then, for new reasons. i will find out that my heart never had a limit on joy. i will know new things.

he says - we can never find our way back to loving the same way twice.

i am not the same person from before, though, am i? why would i want to take a tour of my life through the same eyes? why would i want to hold the same figure-eight? why would i come back to what has already been shoved through my throat? why wouldn't i want to walk in a new garden, with new stones?

it is also never the same sunset twice. the same thunderstorm. the same birdsong. life, in little chaos, holds no ghosts. i will love again, and thank god, it will be different. i move on, and the world says - you will meet someone else, who knows a different way to listen. and when i put my ears against the music again, it will feel like i am understanding a new set of secrets.

and it's so hard for you, because not-thinking-about-them is still, in a way, thinking about them. because you are trapped in a cycle - fine see if i care/why don't you love me/i can't shake you/why do i care again. and foolish, you wait, like this time the effort will be different. like this time they'll remember you or think of you or take a moment.

You won’t know it’s the last time, of course. You rarely do.

Later, when thinking back to it, you’ll try to remember whether they lingered for just a moment before they broke away. You’ll try to remember the placement of their hands.

Much later still, you’ll become stuck on the memory of how you met. How you fell in love with their mind. How they surprised you. How they challenged you to become a better person.

You’ll spend Friday evenings trying to disentangle them from your psyche. Like finding an endless array of their socks at the bottom of your drawer. Wishing they would disappear yet being unable to throw them out.

On bad nights, you want to scream. How could you? Of all the people in the world, you were supposed to stay. Out of all the temporality, all that transience - you were meant to be the exception.

You think about calling them, if only to receive a reminder of their voice on the answerphone. You almost do, but something stops you. You remember a poem you read a long time ago. It went something like - 

People are impermanent. The love of your life will leave you. On a Sunday morning, they’ll kiss you for the last time.