Breathe.

August 25, 2014

it will not be at 3 am in someone else’s arms and it will not be when you throw the box of pictures and letters and memories across the room because they’re gone now. They are gone now and you can’t do a thing about it.

this is how you will fall out of love, it will be slow and it will be painful, like slowly tearing a band-aid off, except worse. It will be gradual, like the first time you realized you were falling into love. You may be walking down the hallway of your home when you forget what their nose looks like. There will be flashbacks and times where you imagine them to be right next to you at anytime. You will smell the cigarette smoke and look around, because that used to be them. A stranger will smile at you and you will wish they weren’t around to see you cry.

this is how you will fall out of love, when you realize you used past tense to talk about them. This time you did not have to correct yourself and you did not cry. There will be stormy nights and you will want to text them, “I miss you” but you don’t. You don’t because it’s time. It’s time and you both know it and even though it hurts, you make the decision to turn out the lights and fall asleep alone.
this is how you will fall out of love, you will see someone and think they are cute and you will not feel shame because you saw someone that was not them. You will find yourself staring at your reflection in the mirror, with water dripping off of your freckled skin, right after your shower. You will connect your freckles and pinch your love handles and you will close your eyes and you will remember all the times they held you, but you will not miss them. You will allow yourself this one night of no regrets, this one night of not missing them, this one night of being alone and knowing you’re worthy, because there have been so many nights harder than this one.

this is how you will fall out of love, you will finally forgive them for keeping that from you. It will be less about forgiving and more about forgetting. You will stop blaming yourself, you will stop imagining a future where you meet ten years down the road in a coffee shop or a punk show where your favorite band is playing, and you start over. There is no starting over. You know this is the end. You know it won’t happen again.

this is how you will fall out of love, there will be many sleepless nights. there will be many sleepless nights. there will be many sleepless nights. there will be many sleepless nights, but one day you will drift off to sleep and you won’t dream of them. It will be hard and it may take seven months or a year or three years but you will fall out of love with them and it will hurt and you will hold them in your knees like grass stains that don’t wash out and you may forget their face and you may forget their name but they are a part of you now. You will fall out of love with them and they will fall out of love with you and you will forever see love differently. You will forever see God differently. You will talk to the Divine like they are human, like they are broken, like they have loved and lost it all, too.

this is how you will fall out of love, you will remember that you could never promise forever and you will realize that this was good for as long as it lasted. Your love was fresh and pure until it ran out. You will understand that it did not need to last forever, it did not need to become stale.

— Amanda Helm, This is How You WIll Fall Out of Love (via amandaspoetry)

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(Notes: 6,390)