Broken Pieces

Moving Out and Moving On

Elaine

Tomorrow would be the last day we'd be spending in this dorm room. When we come back for the spring semester, Ria, Dash, and I will be moving into our new apartment. I was cleaning out my closet and putting stuff in boxes when I saw the shirt. It was a white tee with an enormous yellow smiley in the middle of it.

"Is that my shirt?" Luke asked. Oops, I didn't mean to let him get a peek at the shirt I was wearing. It was about 2 am in my time, and we were FaceTiming each other.

"Um, yes...?"

"I thought I'd lost that."

"Yeah, no. I stole it, sorry." I snickered.

"Baby, if you wanted it that bad, you could have just asked for it."

"But this is your favorite shirt! I didn't think you'd just give it to me."

"I would give you my entire wardrobe if you asked."

That was the first article of clothing of his that he ever gave me. After unearthing about five more of his shirts, I only then realized that the oversized red flannel button down I loved so much wasn't actually mine. I stole it once from his luggage and he claimed it looked better on me anyway, so he gave it to me. And that cozy black sweater whose sleeves were an iota longer than my arm? Yeah, not mine either. That denim blue button down used to be his, too. Even that leather bracelet I keep wearing despite not matching any of my other accessories wasn't really mine to begin with. Wearing his clothes used to be my way of keeping him close when I badly missed him. I wore them so often, I had started thinking of them as mine. Just like how he used to belong to me.

Right now, I only wanted to put my arms through the sleeves of that red flannel, but I knew it wouldn't be a good idea. It would be a step backwards, in fact. What I needed to do was get these out of my sight. Put them in a box and ship it to him, wherever he is right now.

That's just what I did. I found a good-sized box and piled all of his clothes inside. Then I went looking for all of his other things amongst mine. I was in a frenzy. I found guitar picks and little notes on receipts from our dates that I liked to keep. A Blink 182 rubber cuff. A necklace he used to wear all the time. A bottlecap from his first legal beer in Australia. Polaroid pictures of him and me. Photobooth pictures of us in stupid poses. A stuffed penguin stupidly named Pengy. A tiny ninja turtle he got for the dashboard of my car, which I never got around to sticking there, it just ended up on my desk. I wiped tears from my eyes. I thought about ripping out the margins from my notebooks on the pages where he had doodled all over them, but even that would be too much.

There was only one thing missing now. I got the black velvet box from where I buried it deep in my underwear drawer. I couldn't even bear to open it. Inside was a small rose gold disc with l + e engraved on it hanging from a delicate chain. I always had it around my neck ever since he gave it to me for our first anniversary. I stopped wearing it when we broke up. And now, hard as it was for me, all of these things had to make their way back to him.

But really, what was the point? If I sent these back to him, that would be calling for attention like, hey, it's been a while since I heard from you so here's me doing something drastic in an effort for you to notice me. No. I was better than that. I just want these out of my sight, but I don't think I have it in me to get rid of them yet. So I labelled the box, DO NOT OPEN and sealed it up tight.

There's one other thing I've been meaning to get rid of. I just don't have the heart to do it. It was a small tattoo that says lh on my left wrist. That was such a stupid decision on my part. I mean, who does that? Who gets a tattoo of their boyfriend's initials on a place where they can see it every day? Well, that was the point actually. And in my defense, I thought we were going to last forever. I should have been smarter than that. Nothing lasts forever.

I've been putting off having it removed because I keep telling myself that laser removal is more painful than getting inked and my pain tolerance isn't that high. But I'm starting to think that I like having it around because I'm a fucking masochist and I craved the daily reminder that I once had a love as great as ours and I screwed it up. It's all on you, I remember him saying.

The box can easily be stashed away. I'll keep wearing watches and layering bracelets on my left arm to hide the tattoo from plain sight, like I've been doing these last few months. And once I move into the new apartment, where he's never set foot in, I'll be living a life devoid of Luke Hemmings.