Purge

It builds up after awhile.

Like what you do with a pipe: you fill it with tobacco, smoke it, then when it runs out, you fill it up again, and so on. Sometimes, you put in more; sometimes, you put in less. Sometimes, you use a different kind. You always hope that you'll find the right kind and you won't have to keep experimenting, and you've come close a couple times, but it just hasn't worked out.

Then you realize you've been smoking way too much, and you have never cleaned out your pipe. Not once. This tar has built up and it has begun to affect you physically, maybe even mentally. OK, definitely mentally.

So what I really mean to say is: I have been tearing out pieces of my heart for years. I put them back, and never gave the wounds a chance to fully heal. I just kept impatiently ripping out new ones, afraid that I wouldn't feel normal if I didn't.

It's almost like I'm one of those people who cut themselves, except instead of doing it externally with a razor, I do it internally with love.

Love.

Not the kind from your friends and family: intimacy. Partnership. As much as I have always wanted it to be real for me, it never has been. I don't know what it's like to have a heart without a hole in it, and I will not be ready for the real thing until I do know.

After eight years, I'm finally not afraid to show some love to myself and let myself heal my wounds. Just me and my gauze, and a little patience. Maybe some pipe cleaners, too.

In solitude.