I was shattered.

Millions of pieces of myself were spread out far and wide– quirks and habits and ideas now merely flotsam in a sea of self-doubt.

He had taken everything that I was and corrupted it.

He’d made me a weaker version of myself; a distorted version of myself I didn’t recognize.

I was never enough.

And then without a word without a warning he was gone. After making his way into the far recesses of my fragile heart he disappeared.

He left me. A broken China doll that he was done playing with.

When you don’t know who you are, how can you put yourself back together again?

What do you do when there are too many fragments of bone and skin and laughter that don’t fit together anymore?

What becomes of a puzzle with too many missing pieces?

I wanted to let myself disappear– to let myself be absorbed into the atmosphere and become nothing.

I wanted every piece of me that he’d ever touched, every dream I’d ever whispered to him, every emotion he ever elicited, to be destroyed forever.

But matter cannot be created or destroyed.

You can never stop being.

There are traces of you in everything you’ve touched.

My words were still flying in the wind, the trees are full of, “Remember that one time…” And sassy little quips.

And I remembered that even something beautiful can be created out broken pieces of glass.

And bit by bit I’m piecing myself together again. A colorful mosaic, whose design is ever changing.

I am being made new.