Since you left, I haven't once thought of tracing my fingernails across my skin. I started eating again, and tried to make things better with the people from which I disconnected.

But it didn't have to do with finding happiness again since you left. It wasn't about regaining confidence—and neither of those things have happened. I'm still every bit as sad as you remember me, if you remember me at all, but I found out that I didn't need to do any of the things I used to do to make myself hurt.

I've found a much better version of masochism.

I used to try and stop my mind from letting memories of us leak into my every day thoughts. I used to try to stop my heart from letting itself skip beats, and then slow back down once it remembered that those memories were just that, memories, and had no chances of recurring now that you didn't love me anymore. It hurt too much, and I was about to cover that hurting with the physical kind when it hit me.

I realized that the worst kind of pain I could experience was heartbreak.

So the next time the memories came, I allowed them to wash over me and let the stinging come, like saltwater crashing into an open wound. I didn't try to stop any of the worst thoughts that came to mind, and wouldn't dry any of the tears that wanted to fall. It burned far hotter than I had expected, but I embraced the embers as they touched me in the weakest places.

This has happened more times than I could count over the past few weeks. Like growing accustomed to the irritation in my skin where I had run my nails and slowly letting it grow to numbness, the impact of the memories has decreased slightly but steadily. I'm hoping that soon enough I can become used to the pain you've left me, that one day the flames will come but I won't be able to feel the burn. Maybe then, like the phoenix, I can reconstruct myself from the ash and embers and come back as if I had never been hurt before.