I have never felt more free than the moment I ran from the warm arms of a lover and out into the Southern California desert, alone, to watch the sunrise. I stepped outside and felt my lungs crack open, the cold February morning air reminding me what it was to breathe after a night spent sleeping next to a man I knew I would never love. I remember it was a full moon that morning and when I turned and saw it, I stood very still for a very long time with tears in my eyes. It occurred to me then. And it occurred to me so clearly that I could not help but think that the entire earth conspired that morning to show me what real love feels like; to show me that it is okay to leave well-enough behind. My brother told me something then that I have not forgotten. He said that there are enough mediocre things in this world and that love, above all else, should never be one of them. So I left that room and I never truly went back.

They don’t tell you what it feels like to have to leave someone when you know exactly what it feels like to be left. See, when I was seventeen I got my heart broken so badly that I spent the entire summer just staring at the ocean. It was the only place that made me feel like I could breathe. I suppose there was something about seeing the waves as they crashed through the air that made me better understand the swells of grief as they crashed through me. It was the summer that I got to know heartbreak like the back of my hand. And how do you ever inflict a pain that you know that intimately upon someone else? When you can still feel it in your bones, when you are convinced that your body will never forget what it felt like to navigate the intricate labyrinth that becomes everyday life in the wake of loss, how do you turn around and push someone else into it? Especially when they buy you flowers and talk to your mom and hold your hand like they never want to let it go. It shouldn’t be able to happen like that, but it happens all of the time.

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