day 8

i feel like my life is a scene straight out of 500 days of summer right now. but, unfortunately this time i'm not zooey deschanel. despite having the long, dark brown hair and the bangs, i am very much joseph gordon-levitt.

i love that movie. i remember watching it with my old ra staff and some of the women freaking out and saying how much they hated it because it didn't end happily. i remember loving it for that very reason. i loved it because that's how life is, and as much as i am a sappy, hopeless romantic, i was sick of the happily ever after rom-com life. i also naively believed that i could never be in that situation. i believed that my life would have one of two scenarios: i would either be a successful career woman without a family/partner, or i would live out one of those utah-concocted fairytales of balancing family and a career. both paths bypassing any heartache.

but today was day 8 of a broken heart.
day 8 of falling asleep upset and waking up disoriented and having to remind myself that my relationship is over. that the past 14 months of my life--probably the hardest and the best--have ended.
day 8 of avoiding my living room because that's where i was told "i just don't love you the way you love me; the way you deserve to be loved" as everything, including my half-empty cup of coffee, still sits just as it was.
day 8 of my spare apartment key, a bag of toiletries, and a pile of clothes sitting on my kitchen counter.
day 8 of not being able to listen to music because it's either too happy, too sad, or triggers a memory or a feeling i just can't deal with yet.
day 8 of having to be constantly preoccupied with work or on the phone to keep from sobbing fits that being alone brings.
day 8 of hearing "it'll all be okay," "you can do better," and "you deserve more," and thinking that it may not ever be okay, that i don't want to do better, and that i probably don't deserve more.
day 8 of pretending that i am fine because my work relationship was a secret so my work breakup has to be too. funny how i feel like i must subliminally broadcast that things are over between us the same way everyone seemed to know we were together as the questions and teasing seemed to end as quickly as they began over a year ago.
day 8 of no crafting because who will i make crafts for now?
day 8 of knowing that yes, i'll still spend valentine's day in disneyland. but not for the second year with someone i love making up for having mono and being no fun last year. but with my mom because everything was already arranged and paid for (and i'd rather be upset and sad in disneyland than upset and sad here).
day 8 of blaming my job, his job. myself.

but mostly it's day 8 of wondering when i'm going to get out of the devastated and shocked phase and when i can be angry. when can i get to that point where tom is remembering everything he loved about summer, but it's the things that now repulse him? because right now i don't know that i'll ever get there. because i don't believe that you ever really stop loving someone-- not entirely.

64 days from today will be my '500 days of' day.' i like to believe that i'll be okay by then. that i will have taken off the rose-colored glasses and be ready to admit to myself that things weren't as perfect. i like to think we'll both be okay enough to go back to being friends and some level of normalcy will return to my life. then there's that clenching feeling that being friends will be too hard and too painful. and i'm pushed back into my reality that the likelihood is that in 64 more days i'll still be waiting for a call or a text saying that this was a mistake. because i'm just silly enough and forgiving enough to know that i'd jump at the chance.