This is How a Heart Breaks

Around eight on most mornings, I go for a walk by the river with my mother.

My mother has been going for daily walks for a long time, but I’ve just recently started to join her. These walks have been good for my mind and for my heart.

It’s been three weeks since the breakup. Three weeks since my life changed completely. Three weeks since a man that I’ve known for six years, a man who I’ve grown up with, changed with, and learned with, walked out of my house and out of my life forever. The vision of him leaving is haunting. In the beginning, I’d wake up in the middle of the night with it playing out in my mind like a movie. Three weeks later, I still vividly remember him standing in my kitchen and saying my last goodbye to him. I can still hear him asking me for one last hug. I can still hear myself refusing. Every time I think of these things: of him moving all of his stuff out of my apartment, of how a man who I’d been with since I was 18 suddenly seemed like a complete stranger to me, my heart breaks again. I can physically feel it tearing apart.