Read Through The Correction.

Read through the correction.

Note to my ex.

Today my professor told me every cell in our entire body is destroyed and replaced every seven years. How comforting it is to know that one day I will have a body that you will have never touched.

In unrelated news:

Not to be That Person(TM) posting remarks about weather on your dash but there’s been a surge of climate change posts on mine.  And not to trivialize the seriousness of those with my anecdotal shitpost but goddamit it’s October and I live in CANADA:

Strike One.

In the first year we were together, he cheated on me with his sister’s girlfriend.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Yep, I'm a Potter fan. Guilty as charged.

Carving this pumpkin was a monumental moment last year. For all his lamenting that I did not observe and facilitate "traditions", he was absolutely against me taking time for anything that was not "essential."

So on October 30, I was carving this guy up feeling morose as it had been days since he spoke to me. Then I had an epiphany.

I was getting satisfaction. My crafting skills are basically on par with a German Sheppard's, so the fact that this thing turned out alright was really encouraging. I was proud of it.

I remember thinking:

"I wouldn't have been allowed to do this if he was still talking to me ...."

And there it was. Something so small, so simple made me think that maybe this separation thing wasn't so bad after all.

I won’t say that I am ashamed that my heart strings still get pulled when I think of the things he suffered.  So much of what I’ve read makes me think that as a survivor I’m supposed to be as cold toward him as he was to me.

I can’t do that.  I loved this man, and the things that haunted him, haunted me.  And I can mourn for the life he may have had if things had been different.

The difference is, rereading these posts, my heart swells for him, but there is no longer the urge to run over and sweep him into a hug he’d probably reject. I won’t accept the shit he’s endured justifying what he did to me.  

That is progress.

Learned Behaviour

His dad was abusive. Violent. And his father before him.

Once he asked his dad for money for a field trip and his dad threw him into a wall so hard he went through the drywall and ended up in his sister’s closet.

He wasn’t born with these skills.

His mother told him when he was in highschool that regardless of what happened, she would always back her husband over him.

He wasn’t born cold.

I know exactly where he comes from.

Behold. My empire of scraps.

I can scrape a life together from ashes and crumbs.