The Notebook Never Sleeps

#1

I want to tell you about the day my heart was broken for the first time. Would you listen if I did? Okay. I had followed after him to Prague, (countries away from home), so that I could be near him as he completed his graduate studies. My arrival to him was a surprise, and of course, it was also surprise to the girl he replaced me with. The concoction of emotions following after it all were exactly what one would expect them to be: devastation, confusion, and full of I-hate-you's. I was holding tightly onto my solidity the way the girl in his room held the sheets over her body. What did she look like?, I thought. And then I realized it didn't matter how she was compared to me. He still chose her over me. It was clear. I didn't get one call from him the entire day. I was hanging onto my phone like he'd be calling soon, begging for my forgiveness and inviting me to go with him to one of those crappy art cinemas he goes to. Did he meet her at one those?, I thought, Did he tell her that he loved her? I wouldn't be surprised if he told her so after he fingered her to some Sidney Bechet tune during a Woody Allen film. That's so gross. Fuck Woody Allen films. Fuck him. Even if he did call, what would I say? I spent the night wavering between packing up my things or staying. I left the apartment for an hour and entered the first restaurant I laid my eyes on. I wanted to pretend I was that white lady in Eat, Pray, Love who left her husband and visited different countries to find the power of love and inner peace or some bullshit like that. But I didn't want to pray or love. It's hard to pray when you're an atheist and it's hard to love when you're heartbroken. The check made me want to pray to the money goddesses about my bank account, though. I walked out of the place and sat outside on the floor and focused on a piece of gum. Pink, gross. I deleted every sign of him from my phone. Deleting any sign of him from my life proved harder. Why can't we delete memories?

That night, I wrote out all the reasons why he sucked anyways. I must have cried loud enough to hear because my neighbor began blasting a playlist of Amy Winehouse break up songs. I cut Polaroids of us into pieces, but to tear them apart wasn't enough. I flushed them down the toilet. After flushing them all, I cried at how expensive the film was, and started cursing at myself and the toilet. I think heartbreak makes you crazy. My neighbor knocked on the wall twice. It wasn't an aggressive can-you-fucking-stop-crying type of knock. It was a light, reassuring, you'll-be-fine kind of knock. The walls are thin here, but I like it. It makes me feel less alone.

I scrolled through his Instagram for almost a half an hour that night, searching for The Girl, wondering if I could have seen signs much earlier. I found none - not even one comment. I threw my phone somewhere out of sight, and paced around my room, debating whether or not to call my mom and my friends. I really didn't want to because I was proving a point to my friends, (who hated him from the beginning), that we were ready to move onto the next part of our relationship. I didn't want to tell my mom because she would get crazily worried that I was staying here, well, alone. I knew I'd have to call someone eventually, so I began searching for my phone around my room. I tried retracing my steps, but it wasn't like I lost it far from that point. I checked in ridiculous places like under the rug and under the bed sheets. Tired from being frantic, I sat on my exposed mattress, empty-headed, staring at one point on the floor, but not focusing on anything at all. I was ready to stay there for long - maybe even forever - if I was comfortable enough, but I wasn't. I couldn't be. The images were flooding back into my mind like the memories were blood and my mind was a needle. I arrived at the image of him - his face - once again.