I hate seeing my exes.

Ok, I don’t hate seeing all of my exes. There are some who I’m very happy to see. I like seeing the ones who I split with amicably. There was even some horizontal tangoing post the breakup just to be officially done – the prescribed last three rodeos before retirement if you know what I mean. Some of my exes still throw business my way. We meet and hang out. Laugh, even. One of my faves? I’m constantly trying to set him up. Not with myself, obviously. But with girls I deem worthy. I kid. I kid!

And I digress. You know the ones I hate seeing? And I bet this applies to most people – The One Who Broke My Heart.

STILL! I STILL hate seeing him. Even after literally more than a decade of our break up, my heart still recoils at the sight of him. Because that was the site of a crime. An arson, if we’re being specific. My heart turned to ash and drifted away, much like our clearly meaningless almost-love.

But almost doesn’t count. I know it sounds like I’m being melodramatic, but man, that first heartbreak nearly killed my…my something, I don’t even know what it almost murdered. I remember just not understanding what the hell was going on, and how this could have happened, because I just did NOT understand. And it isn’t even that he didn’t love me back that was the painful part. It was that I gave so much of myself to this person who maybe I shouldn’t have? I don’t regret being vulnerable, I just wish there wasn’t someone out there who knew so much about me and was filing that stuff under old, discarded news. Recycle Bin. I wish there wasn’t someone who made me feel incomplete simply by appearing. Like I’m not enough.

I know I would still do it over again. And I know I would still remain as vulnerable, even if present me went to give past me a mother-sized slap. It wouldn’t have made a difference. But…man oh man, I can’t wait for when I can see him and not feel like a trusting 18-year-old girl with stars in her eyes who doesn’t know that any minute now, the darkness is coming. I hope he has forgotten that file in the backroom of his mind. Because right now…I can’t.