Because words…
They do hurt.
They burn, sting, and throb.
Cut, slash, and impale.
They tear at the flesh surrounding your heart cavity until there’s nothing left but a gaping hole.
They stab at a person’s brain and remind them that they’ve been spoken.
Until finally…
They leave scars.
Scars don’t heal. They stay with you, reminding you that even emotional wounds never go away. Yeah, maybe you’ll eventually forget about them.
Go on with your life.
Learn to overcome them.
But as you travel along the long, winding road called life, there will be reminders planted everywhere you go. Most of all I ask myself why in the hell I’m still thinking about my ex? I should kick the thought of him to the curb.
But I can’t.
Even though I should I won’t.
My brain likes to flash those five torturous words through my mind at the exact moment I seem to be starting to forget about them.
It doesn’t matter where I am.
What I’m doing.
Who I’m with.
I hear his gritty, baritone voice and I hear him say,
I don’t love you anymore.
The same thing always happens when I hear his words in my mind.
My heart ignites, blowing up and raging, burning, burning, burning like a bonfire surrounded by a plethora of party goers.
The trembling begins and I have to leave if I’m in a public place because if I’m holding something I always drop it.
You break it, you bought it.
This has happened more times than I can count.
Finally, my tear ducts kick into over drive and I’m watering the floor beneath my feet like a sprinkler over fresh cut grass.
I don’t love you anymore.
Suddenly, I have a moment of clarity when I realize I’m dwelling too much on my past. The past is the past after all, you can’t re-write it. There’s no giant eraser and you can’t erase portions of it to make changes. The only thing you can do is plow ahead, learn from the mistakes of your past and make changes as you go. If you want to that is. I happen to be the type of person that likes to learn from my mistakes and not repeat them.
I’m brought back to the now when my teeth start chattering. I’m wearing a hoodie and pea coat, but the cold still bleeds through the layers of my clothing. I pump warmth into my arms then decide to turn my car back on.
Over the last couple hours, I’ve been turning it on and off to try and preserve the half of tank of gas I have left in my tank. Ella tells me all the time that I’m wasting more gas by turning my car on and off. I don’t know how true that is. All I know is that when my car was on and I noticed the needle dipping dangerously close to being under the half of a tank mark, I panicked and shut off the engine.