The familiarity with which your new lover spoke to me had me desperate for air as the two of you, seemingly unaware of the atmosphere, convened before me on my own bed with such affection that I felt physically nauseous. Maybe, you’ll say, it was just the tequila but no. I know the difference between a feeling in my stomach and the extreme discomfort that is heartbreak, only this is different from the heartbreak I used to know.

The last time I met her, this foul beauty sat atop my chest like an elephant and kept me from my life. She whispered sweet “not good enoughs” in my ear all day long and laughed at how pathetic I was all through the night. She was heavy and dark, then, but today she comes to me hand in hand with something altogether new. I don’t quite know yet how to put my finger on it. The best I can do for you is describe this panicky feeling that they give me.

It starts in the pit of my churning stomach, a tingly sensation like how you feel when you’re minutes away from receiving a reward you’ve waited months for, only warped by a second force like thick, sticky fire. I am scared of losing what we had, though I know that it’s already gone. I know you’re already gone. But I’m still holding onto this thing that I poured my time, energy, and soul into because why wouldn’t I? Artists all have one project that they slave over for years with no true reward or outcome. One that haunts them in their dreams at night and invalidates every other success in their career. It is their personal Portrait of Dorian Gray. I’m lucky, though, because I’m a writer not an artist so my Portrait just so happens to be you, Heartbreaker. My cruel mistress sends you to be in many forms but this time you managed to take a part of me home to her.

It’s not that I loved you more than the others. It’s that I believed in you the most. I trusted you the most. I gave you more second chances than I gave myself when I still thought that a victim was all I would ever be and still you hurt me. Every time you proved that you didn’t truly care about me, I saw it as a challenge to prove that maybe over time you could. The feeling grows in my stomach for several minutes before abruptly exploding to fill every part of me with ash, smoke, and rubble. I am a shadow of who I once was and can no longer make sense of the parts. I make wild, unpredictable movements in an attempt to tidy the space but the faster you move through smoke and ash the further it gets away from you.

These are all of the things I think about as your new lover slips on the end of her sentence and looks to you, cheeks flushed, to be reassured. A whole new set of demons come out to play as you reach for her hand and lay your hot lips on her forehead. I realize with a start that she sees you for the new person that you want to be the way I never can because I spent too much energy on someone else. You are for her what I’ve begged of you for years but that is another pain for another day.

Oh, heartbreak! I know your friend. How silly of me to forget a face. Oh, please, tell jealousy…

Tell him nothing. I will pretend he is a stranger so we may get to know each other all over again. He will be my lover, comforting me over my small mistakes, while you watch on and feel nothing. I will rest here in familiar arms for as long as they might have me.