horrible, isn't it?

The reason it hurts to be dumped, or fall by a friend’s wayside, is because not only are you losing something that you want, but the thing that you want is, quite conversely, glad to be rid of you. The next time you see them, your anxiety at the whole affair is one-sided because they’ve moved on—the day they made it obvious how they felt, you got to witness them moving on. You like to tell yourself they think about you, wonder how you’re doing…but they probably don’t. When they run into you unexpectedly, a garrison of butterflies is very unlikely to suddenly begin moshing within their stomach. They’ll forget the encounter almost instantly, while it will cling unpleasantly yet tenaciously to your thin skin like a staticky sweater. Deep down, you know this is the problem, and yet for some reason the inherent desire to form complex emotional bonds with the other members of your species does not contain an escape clause in the event that your affection is not reciprocated. And so, there is your affection, barreling down I-35W at sixty miles-per-hour one fateful August day in 2007, only to go careening off the collapsed bridge that you saw coming, but not nearly soon enough to do anything to prevent your descent. And the goddamned world doesn’t even stop when that happens. You’re just another carpet thread, snagged on the claw of a mischievous feline, removed from your context, and soon discarded from the dustpan of somebody who wanted the floor a little cleaner.