how to never get over anyone.
it’s pretty common to say, ‘yes, i’m over so-and-so’, or ‘no, i’m not over so-and-so.’ i have several friends going through the various stages of break-up. and during a conversation with flood, i realized something about the heart.
there are some people you’ll never get over. in your heart [that tricky and profound organ] there’s a little piece of each person you’ve loved. you don’t even think about it, but it remains there, like a secessionist island, that has a little flag pinned to it, and it obstinately refuses to give up it’s share of your emotional commonwealth.
it’s the thing that still, after months or years, that still beats faster when the name is mentioned, while the rest of your heart feigns emotional nonchalance. it’s the part of you that remembers what their pillow smelled like, how their collarbone arched a certain way, their favorite song, the sweater you wore that drove them crazy. love is a funny thing.
so, every boy i’ve loved, in any capacity, will always have a little sympathetic underground revolution, a little stubborn cuba, hanging on to the edge of my fully recovered heart. at last count, there were about five. there will be more. eventually, their causes will become more and more muted. and then one day, when the rest of my heart is triumphantly unanimous for one person, those little islands will sigh, take down their battered little war-flags with fading names on them, and recede slowly into the recesses of emotional nostalgia.
but for now, they are powerful hell-raisers, capable of throwing my whole day off with one little whiff of hermes cologne, or white button downs, or when my sheets smell like soap and cigarette smoke, or the sight of a battered volvo, or rainy nights, or the memory of kenyan red dirt on the soles of his feet, or when i see moss-green eyes smiling, or nat king cole.
which gives me pause to wonder – should any of these pieces of history decide to reclaim their territories, would my heart be strong enough to stand its ground?