I might be stupid.

I had planned to avoid town entirely in order to avoid bringing the issue to a head when it might be premature. I don’t want to crowd him into making the decision that I don’t want him to make.

But, damnit, I have a right to continue my business too, and there was at least one check waiting for me in the Post Office. I decided this morning to go get my mail. I called him—got the voice mail, of course—just to warn him that I was coming out and to give him the option of talking to me or not. I just left him a quick message saying that I was going to get my mail. I didn’t want him to run across me in town and think I was stalking him.

And town hurts to see. I’ve never in the last few years driven through there without seeing at least one person I knew to wave at. But this morning, it was like I was a ghost. I didn’t see anyone I know, which was probably a good thing if I didn’t want to burst into tears. I managed to save the tears until I was headed out on the highway.

I didn’t drive by his house or the barn. I can see the house from the highway, and I looked, but I didn’t see his truck there. Doesn’t mean that it wasn’t parked in the barn. It took strength that I didn’t know I had to not go by what used to be my home barely two weeks ago.

The longer he lets this go, the more permanent this scar is going to be.

I’ve had my own demons and ghosts throughout this relationship. They whispered to me, “He’s going to hurt you. He’s going to leave you. They always do. You’ll be lucky if he doesn’t hurt you physically.”

Now, that last one was easy to dismiss; I knew he didn’t have it in him to raise his hand to me. But I’ve always had it in the back of my mind that this day would inevitably come. Of course it would, why wouldn’t it? Everyone else has hurt me, and that has shaped me, leading me to expect it.

Most of the time I wrote that off as my own insecurities. But did the voices see something that I didn’t want to look at? And my god, how am I ever going to shut them up now?

The one last time I took a chance and gave my heart away, it got mangled up and thrown in the dirt. How would I ever be able to do it again? It’s like he’s cut my arm off that was once broken but finally healed. He cut it off, and I can get all the prosthetics in the world, but that arm ain’t never coming back. I might even get good enough at hiding it sometime in the future that the casual observer would never know that I’m missing a body part, but I’ll always know that it’s gone. And I could manage better without an arm than without my heart.

You might think it’s the depression talking, and the newness of the hurt. You might say to give it time; you’ll be OK. But I know I won’t, as sure as I would be able to see that arm lying there on the ground. I’m going to hurt for a long time, and even when the hurting’s done, I won’t be the same.

And he won’t even give me the respect he’d give a horse. He’d treat a horse or put it out of its misery, but he’s just going to stand there and let me bleed. Sooner or later, I’m going to run out of blood, and then I’ll just be empty. I almost wish that would be sooner, just so it stops hurting, but there’s no coming back from empty. As it is, he’s going to have to start CPR pretty soon if he expects me to survive intact.