Heartbreak

Someone teaches you about heart break. You’re going to have to figure it out by yourself. Heartbreak is going to feel a lot like food poisoning when she leaves, even though you haven’t eaten in days. You don’t talk, you don’t open your mouth, you just lay on the bathroom floor so that every time you feel words coming up and pushing to spit out, you’ll be able to reach for the toilet to flush away the screams. Heartbreak will start to feel a lot like a disease when your mother demands why you’re shivering under four blankets and you’ll try to explain to her that you’re not cold on the outside, you’re cold like all the sunshine has left your bloodstream and veins. You’re cold like standing without an umbrella under the rain. Heartache will feel a lot like the cold that follows you around all winter. It’ll creep up on you like a fog in the spring, and you’ll never have a chance to see it coming. So when you wake up suddenly because she’s calling you at 3 am after 6 months, and you feel that chill in your bones and the pounding in your head and your teeth are chattering, don’t pick up. This is a sickness that you can prevent. Don’t pick up no matter how many times she calls, because even though you’ve pictured yourself rejecting her apology a million times, you know that if you hear her voice that you’ll break faster than you can take a breath. Scream into your pillow and block her number from your phone. You wanted her back once, but not anymore. It’s okay to push her out of your mind and it’s okay to cry about it, but please don’t let yourself fall victim to the sickness again. You’re stronger than that. What my mother should’ve told me at fifteen I guess.