How do you take your heart out of it?

I am, after just over a week in the city, a working woman again. It sort of feels like I never left. I don't know if that's good or bad. I don't have to worry about fucking up because I know exactly what I'm doing, but I feel myself slipping back into old skins as if they are antique silk and lace dresses in my grandmother's attic. I am not twirling in front of an antique mirror. I am not the same person I was a year ago. I left this behind. I am modelling these dresses for my imminent funeral. Open casket, of course. They are musty and itchy and have moth holes. I hate these dresses. Regardless, I am living like an adult. I wake up early and buy groceries and clean up my own mess and go to bed early. I scrub the counters. I pay for gas. Sometimes I feel beautiful. Sometimes I really don't. Often, I think of you. Usually, when I do this, I feel inexplicably nauseous. Or that's what I like to think. I wonder if you went through with it. I wonder why I care. I wonder how to stop. Caring, that is. I know, I know you certainly don't. When I'm especially bored, I craft elaborate dialogues in my head (if only I hadn't mysteriously lost this talent when I was trying to write a play) in case I might get to use them. A girl guide is always prepared and my entire life, to one degree or another, is scripted. Sometimes I don't want to ever have to do this the dramatist's way. Sometimes I really do. I am incredibly masochistic. I can't seem to do anything to change this. And so I fantasize. I dream of the moment that I can spurn you when love has made you vulnerable even though I know this moment does not and will never exist. I ache for it because my existence is completely based on carefully calculating my own demise. So I fantasize, and I wait, and I am waiting for nothing, because you are gone.

"If you've come here to ruin my life, please save yourself the trouble, make an about turn, and march right back out the door because you've already done a perfectly sufficient job. Goodbye."