my heart has never been broken. but it sure has been bruised and handled carelessly in the past. i never really think about the two times that it mattered; i'm not the kind of girl that finds pleasure or benefit in ruminating over my love interests gone bad. but i will admit that in seattle, i felt relief in knowing that the chances of running into the two people for whom i felt something significant (though not love), were almost none. and when i came back to bellingham, i did so knowing that it was only a matter of time before i'd cross paths with them again. and although it oddly didn't happen for the first 4 months, this week, i saw and talked to both of them. it was bizarre. although we were trading surface-level facts of our lives, i was thinking: you've seen me naked. i've seen you naked. we did things together naked. and now we're sitting here making small talk, intentionally not bringing that up. i only feel the significance of sex in retrospect. but the beautiful thing was that i felt nothing besides a dull pang of annoyance—at the boys, yes, but also at myself for letting myself become so small. sometimes though, seeing the obvious is like trying to look at wind. although you can feel it, you can't see it, so it becomes easy to pretend that it's not lurking in the corners of that space created between two people.

and that, my friends, is that.