Recovery.

"And it took so long just to feel all right,
Remember to put back the light in my eyes."

I'll break the ice yet again with a story.
I spent the past year getting over having my heart broken by a real-life asshole. I've been through all the emotions--the anger, the unbearable sadness, the constant despairs, the longing and actual begging for him to come back to me, the hate (oh! the hate), the unbearable loneliness. I've eaten my feelings, cut my hair, thrown and broken things, gained 15 pounds, found a rebound boy, had my heart further broken by him (but really, there wasn't much left of my heart to begin with, so it was an anti-climactic breakage), and avoided places I might run into him. I finally found the strength to sit down and write about it--all of it, him, us, we, everything else that went to shit this past year as well. I hate him even more after finishing it, but it's a different kind of hate. It's a "FUCK YOU" kind of hate, as opposed to the "WHY DON'T YOU LOVE ME" hate from last year. It's the only kind of hate I allow myself to carry around within me, the kind of hate that I know is justified because I am living and breathing pathetic proof that he hurt me almost beyond repair.

There have been only a few slight issues with avoiding him--actually, really only one major issue. About a year ago, when we were fresh and there was still hope milling around in my head and heart, I left a boiling pot, belonging to my roommate, in his apartment. This was when we lived across the hall from each other. Of course he moved, and of course he took the boiling pot with him. I have been asking for it for over a year now. It's the last connection that we have to each other, the only reason now that we would ever meet up and exchange anything. I've been bothering him about it for a month since I've been back and he's always just leaving class or not at home. I've seen it as his last strain of control over me, his way of grasping at straws as possessing the only thing he now has that I want.

So today, I was napping and I got a call from him. It's been so long since I've seen his name come up on my phone, but of course I didn't pick up. When I got up, I looked outside my doorstep, and there was the boiling pot on my doormat. But instead of feeling relieved or happy to have the pot back, I just put it on the counter and started to cry. I don't even know why, and I don't like it. I don't like the fact that I hate him so much, but he still finds a way to make me sad--sad for the him that I fell in love with and lost, the idea that I once went to sleep to the idea and prospect of "us," and the fact that it's all over now, and nothing is connecting us in anyway, and I'll go on with my life and he'll go on with his and nothing will ever bring us together ever again.