you’re not special

about

Tag: heartbreak

  • Sweetheart

    Did you think of me while you were in her?

    It unraveled me to know

    How could you move on so quickly?

    It taints my memory like a stain

    I can’t say it aloud; there’s no need

    Now, your sweetheart sits, attached to the memory of you

    To the way that I remember you

    In the way that I remember us

    Sweetheart

    That’s the hardest part

    It wasn’t just one night, or how quickly you moved on

    It’s that now, when I do think of you,

    the way you’d look at me or the way you’d say my name

    Something about it feels heavy

    The memory of cracking your knuckles, knowing to skip one whose pop was too sharp

    Sweetheart

    You thought I would never know

    That it would mean nothing

    only one night

    white sheets, closed curtains

    The irony of a hotel in your city

    It would be forgotten by morning

    Sweetheart

    It meant everything to me

    I would never wish the pain of such realization on another

    Sweetheart

    I protected the good in you and clung to the thought that this was for the better

    You did this for the better.

    Sweetheart

    You have tainted every memory of us

    Was it real?

    Did you love me in the ways I loved you?

    fully,

    patiently,

    in the staying?

    Now, I wonder the reasons you left

    Why wasn’t I enough to stay

    Sweetheart

    I know

    I am not easy to rest with

    I feel deeply, and I want the things you fear

    Sweetheart

    I was real

    I was not temporary

    I realize the simplicity now

    My place in your life

    I wasn’t important

    I question how I could have felt so intentionally while you were timing your exit carefully

    Sweetheart

    I don’t feel the same anymore

    I loved you with no plan

    Sweetheart

    The scariest part wasn’t losing you

    It was the loss of the version of me who believed love was enough

    So much in me has shifted because of you

    Sweetheart

    Would you want to be loved by you?

    I ask myself this when I feel bitter

    Because the answer has been yes

    To love is a gift

    But to be loved?

    It is genuine and abundant

    It never withholds, it gives all that it has

    I did that with you

    I want to be loved that way

    Sweetheart

    Would you?

    Would you wish to receive the love you give?

    Only you know

    Sweetheart

    and even now, after it all

    I hope you never miss me the way I miss you

    I know that you don’t

    I would never wish you such ache

    Even now,

    sweetheart

    I wish you everything and more

    Everything that you couldn’t find in me.

    You’ll look for it in her

    Sweetheart

  • Alone in New York

    Alone in New York

    Sitting here, in 10B, watching the city of my dreams shrink beneath me, I have no choice but to sit with my thoughts. 

    Ironically, my flight is rerouted through your city because of the weather. 

    After a week in New York, where I thought all thoughts of you would fade, I boarded this plane a little more heartbroken than when I arrived.

    To think that you and I ultimately did not work out because I might one day live in this dream city of mine.

    Not because of something dramatic or unforgivable, but simply because of what neither of us could give up. That would be too easy.

    Throughout this trip, I saw love and laughter. Places you’d admire and things you’d laugh at. 

    Other times, I swore I could hear your laugh or picture your reaction to something small.

    In the mornings, as I brushed my teeth listening to the life in the house around me, I thought of you brushing yours next to me- still groggy, playfully intruding.

    Instead, I stood alone at the sink, finishing my routine inside the reality where I don’t know where you are or what your mornings look like anymore.

    We went for coffee. I spotted something you would love.

    I didn’t order it.

    I watched my best friends laugh into each other, bodies leaning as instinct. I thought about how it once felt to be folded into you like that.

    Selfishly, I wished it were me.

    I was alone in New York

    I reminded myself of my dreams and your needs. Of how I couldn’t be who you needed. I thought about everything this city might offer me, everything I haven’t seen yet.

    And then I thought about you anyway.

    About the fun we had. The love we shared. The fights. The words we shouldn’t have said. The way you made me feel- both love and hurt.

    I was alone in New York

    During my week in the city, I sat and watched. One of the first things you ever noticed about me was that I’m a people watcher.

    You were right.

    I watched people alone and people together. People running, people lingering, people so young and others well lived.

    I wondered what had shaped them, what they’d lost, what they’d chosen.

    I wondered if they’d been heartbroken before. If it gets easier. If anyone ever feels certain.

    Eventually, my thoughts wandered back to you. What were doing? Where were you? What you might say if you sat beside me on that bench.

    You didn’t.

    I was alone in New York

    The food was incredible. Endless plates, every kind of cuisine. We shared bites, laughed about how full we were, and kept eating anyway.

    I caught myself thinking about what you’d like and what you’d refuse to try. How we’d argue who got the last bite.

    You’d tease me for having yet another Diet Coke. I’d roll my eyes.

    I remembered how we used to leave anywhere, any event, just to find food to share late at night.

    I had the last bite 

    I was alone in New York

    I watched my best friend spin through crosswalks, quietly cared for. Extra eyes on the subway, kisses on corners, and photos with a view.

    I won’t pretend I wasn’t envious. I wanted to be the one asking for a picture with my person in my favorite place.

    Instead, I held the phone.

    The week was good. It really was. Fun was had. Memories were made. I was grateful, deeply.

    But my heart felt heavier than it ever has on a trip, making even joy feel like something I had to carry.

    I was in New York, just not in the way I once imagined.

    I was alone in New York.

    On our last day, luggage in hand, a boy ran across the sidewalk. He picked up a girl and spun her around like in the movies. I, too, wish I were kidding. She laughed, arms locked around his neck as kisses flooded her face and neck.

    You could hear him say how much he missed her.

    Why couldn’t we have been that?

    I was selfish in this moment. I didn’t know their story. I don’t know what they’ve endured or how long it has been since their last hug.

    Still, my envy curdled into anger. Then sadness.

    I let myself feel it.

    After delays and reroutes, the fastest way home was through your city- a place I’ve avoided since you. I took the coincidence personally, as if the universe was checking to see if I’d healed yet.

    I hadn’t.

    Now it’s 11 p.m., seat 10B, flying away from New York, a city I love, carrying thoughts of what we were and what we won’t be.

    Not because either of us failed.

    Just because our paths didn’t bend.

    I can’t give up this city. I can’t give up what it might give me, or who I might become here. That doesn’t make me brave. It doesn’t make me cruel.

    It just makes it my choice.

    My father once told me that you can’t be alone in this world if you have even one person in it who loves you.

    You should know, you’ll never be alone as long as I’m in it.

    But tonight, at 11 p.m., in seat 10B, I feel alone, but loved enough to keep going,

    and still I choose New York

  • a pocket full of grief

    It’s easier to write about love. The thrill of it, the certainty, the way it makes you feel chosen.

    It’s even easier to write about love once it’s over, when time has softened the pain into lessons.

    To write about hurt is different.

    Hurt isn’t poetic. It isn’t neat. It lies heavy on your chest, dull and consuming. Challenging you to make something beautiful out of a feeling that was never gentle to begin with.

    That’s where I’ve been lately.

    Overwhelmed with things I want to say. Full of feelings, I don’t know how to justify on a page, completely lost on how to make it all worth reading.

    Heartbreak is unlike any other emotion.

    It doesn’t move in a straight line. It rises, collapses, heals, then reopens without warning. Growth is neighbor to desperation. Hope is roommates with devastation. It introduces you to pain you didn’t know your body could hold.

    It’s ironic, how heartbreak can never be linear.

    A straight line, a flat line. The absence of all feeling and life, the moment the heart stops speaking entirely.

    Love survives in the moment, grief lives in its waves.

    Once you meet grief, you recognize it forever.

    I think of grief as a rock in your pocket. At first, the weight of it seems unbearable. Every step is a reminder that it’s there. Over time, it grows lighter, or maybe you simply grow stronger. It never leaves, the rock; you just learn how to move on with it.

    Some days you forget it’s there.

    Other days, it feels heavier than it ever has.

    We all carry rocks. Romantic love isn’t the only way loss enters life, but every human who breathes knows grief. It’s unavoidable.

    And yet, every time a rock is added, we fall again.

    Defeat becomes familiar. Healing feels temporary, Progress feels fragile.

    Grief looks different for everyone.

    In my life, it looks like mourning a love that is still alive.

    The person I grieve wakes up under the same sky and moves forward, just now, without me.

    Grieving someone who still exists is its own kind of cruelty.

    Right now, my grief looks like emptiness.

    Both emotionally and physically.

    Heartbreak has its way of stripping you to skin and bones.

    You take up less space without intention.

    Your clothes fall differently, your reflection startles you. There is an emptiness that settles in. You can’t tell where from, your chest, stomach, or life, but it’s made itself comfortable in the hollowness of you.

    People question with care; you don’t have the language to explain the lack of restraint. It was a loss. Weight has shifted elsewhere, and love has collapsed inward.

    I didn’t choose this

    Grief found me.

    Sometimes I wonder if it would have been easier to never have met you at all.

    Love was never about safety. As humans, we risk our lives for love. We give our bodies, our certainty, our sense of self. We open ourselves up to something we know might not stay.

    And even now, I don’t wish I had never loved you.

    I wish it hadn’t taken parts of me to exist.

    But loving, when it nearly took everything out of me, remains the most wonderful gift I’ve ever given.

    That moment, when you sit with nothing left to give. Truly, you sit after you’ve explained, begged, waited, forgiven, cried, and through it all, loved. You realize there was nothing more you could have done when you reached the flatline of heartbreak. That moment deserves mourning.

    Losing someone who once knew you completely

    Losing someone who once spoke your love fluently, then lost the language

    That is grief.

    You don’t get to run from it

    You have to feel the rocks as you stand, and keep going anyway.

    That’s the risk of love. You risk your life, your joy, and your peace.

    All for a feeling

    A feeling we keep getting back up to find.

    I will get up, and there will be love again

    This time, I will find a love that is recognized, not just received.

    Someone will meet me and think that love is me. Someone will understand that my love is not just what I offer, it is entirely who I am

    Someone will meet me, and all the ways of me will suddenly feel like home. Someone will love me with all the rocks in my pockets.

    And I will love them the same way. Fully and honestly. Carrying all that we carry.

    That is when I’ll finally understand,

    You were not special for loving me