It hasn’t been good lately

It hasn’t been good lately.

 

No, scratch that.

 

It hasn’t been good for a while.

 

And every time I look out and am reminded of how much worse everything might be for others, I tell myself, maybe it actually has been good lately.

 

But when I get home to my empty room and my empty bed, the discarded pieces of my heart in the shape of you and your clothes and your enveloping hands make themselves known. The gaping hole screams, “Fill me!” And I try, but I fail, and I try, but I fail, and the more I try the more it screams, the more I fail it begs me to try again.

 

So, yes. It hasn’t been good lately. And if projections are correct, if the realities of heartbreak are to be considered, if the stories of moving on and regressing two steps back are to be believed in, then I won’t be good for a while.

 

And I’m writing this down because it demands to be said today, but also because despite it all, I would want to look to today someday in the future and say, “Well, Joy of 2019, you’d be glad to know one thing: it is good now.”

 

It hasn’t been good lately. My evenings are sleep-deprived, and in the nights I manage to sleep I subconsciously look for your body next to mine. My days are work-filled, and in the rare moments I get to breathe I clutch my phone waiting for texts that never arrive, calls that were never made. Meals are force-fed, enough to trudge on; the smell of alcohol has started to stick to me as I intentionally shift the bittersweetness of heartbreak to touch my lips, allowing it to envelop me entirely.

 

It hasn’t been good lately.

 

It might not be for a while.

 

And I’m tired.

 

But the great thing about the human heart is its ability to mend itself. The great thing about muscles is the fact that they get better through time.

 

The great thing about heartbreak is the heart only gets stronger.

 

So who knows?

 

Maybe someday I’d wake up and think, it isn’t so bad after all. Maybe someday I’d be in the middle of writing and say, it’s getting pretty good lately.

 

Maybe someday would be the day today’s Joy is craving for desperately, and I would tell myself, it is good again.