It's been one of those weeks, the kind I only experience once in a blue moon. I've sustained three minor injuries this week, each new injury increasing in pain. I hadn't felt pain since, well, you walked out on me.

My first injury was to the eye. I was folding jeans in a mad rush to clear off the bed so I could go to sleep. While flipping them to fold in half, the thick seam at the bottom of the pant leg swiped my eyeball. Such an irritation, one worthy of a curse word or two. After five minutes of blurred vision and watering from my left eye, I went back to my task.

My second injury occurred on a windy day this week. I was setting my purse in the passenger's seat of my car when the wind blew so hard that it knocked my door forward. It happened fast and unexpectedly. I tried to complete my task, but the door had gained too much momentum and slammed my hand leaving a putrid bruise. The pain was greater than that of the last.

My third injury occurred when preparing my dinner. I thought I'd let the crockpot do the work and while pulling it out from the cabinet, I skinned my knuckle against the wood. It left a nasty gash and throbbed for a couple of days. You see, the location of this scrape was most inconvenient. I found myself forgetting about it and therefore, continually bumping it while performing my daily tasks.

As I said, I hadn't felt pain since you walked out. All of these injuries pale in comparison to the pain of heartbreak. "Our story was one that could be etched in stone", you would say, "because it will last for ever!". Instead you used your hammer and chisel to etch pain into my heart, striking harder and deeper until it fell in a million pieces. 

And finally, an epiphany! All of the pain I've endured this week and the pain I endured from heartbreak happened because of my own negligence. I wasn't focused on the condition of my eye, my hand, or finger, just the task I was quickly trying to complete. The same can be said about us. I wasn't focused on the condition of my heart, just of the relationship I wanted.

 The only thing, other than time, that helped me heal was distraction. My heart broke because I wasn't paying attention and I overcame it when I stopped paying attention.

What we had together wasn't beautiful. It wasn't supportive. It wasn't love. It was hell. And we didn't let each other forget it. Why did it last for so long, some ask? Because with the pain came real emotion. When it ended, I didn't cry because I missed him. I cried because I missed feeling. Yet I was so naive and "in love" that I didn't realize it then. I would have come crawling back to him if he had asked at the time. But only because I was tricked by the illusion that he could patch up my shattered heart. But you see, that figurative tape of his wasn't tape at all. It was a rope. And if I had let him, he would have tied that rope around my broken heart like a leash. And I was too naive to feel him tugging every which way, screaming at me to do things right for once. As I think of this now, I don't know what stopped me from going back. I have this hunch that it's because a tear from my crying heart slipped into my blood stream and travelled throughout my body, letting every inch of me know that I was in pain, and eventually ended up in my brain. Then there was that typical heart versus mind junk that went on (though I think that saying is ridiculous). My point is, something clicked and I suddenly realized how stupid I was to think he could fix me when it was him who broke me in the first place. Of course, ice cream and movies and friends got me through it, but what really fixed me was this realization.

To you: I won't hold anything against you; it will do neither of us any good. In fact, I hope you've had a wonderful life thus far.