"I should hate you 'cause I love you; You should hate yourself for treating me like that; We both know you only love you; Did you know they have a name for that?"

I sit in a disorderly home recognizing the past ten weeks are a real-life sucker punch to the throat. I gasp as I look around at the mess of furniture that wasn’t in this room two months ago. Toiletries, makeup, hair products, and towels are draped on random flat surfaces as I remodel the bathroom. They remind me of my internal chaos. I gulp for air trying to create sound, but only hear the crickets outside the windows. I turn on lights around me to create the illusion of a full house.

Returning to the living room that's decorated like college kids moving into a first apartment, I sit myself at a card table scattered with jigsaw puzzle pieces. Turning on the TV to an app, I watch a program he’d loudly mock, and try to forget.

The shit show is never far from my mind. After all, it’s not a normal breakup. He shed no tears, offered no apologies, and has hardly said a paragraph to me since he left. He doesn’t call. He doesn’t tell me he loves me. He doesn’t reminisce.

He’s cold, calculating, cruel, and quick to say it was a misunderstanding, after he blamed me. He’s not concerned with me or the role I played in his life. He’s moved on.

She let me know as much. Truthfully, I asked.

She suggested I focus on letting go, too.

Until that moment, I thought my progress had been ten steps forward in the past week. I had laughed, uncontrollably; consistently ate proper meals; regularly ventured outside my home for fun activities; seen friends; reinvented two rooms, changing paint colors, rejuvenating floors, and sanding shelves. I constantly proved to myself I can do hard things.

But now, the room spirals. My eyes lose concentration and emotionally, I’m catapulted back to the early days of the shit show. Immediately, I feel the weight of his resentment and disregard. The narcissistic reality. I remember when he casually told me he cheated on me twice. No big deal as I cried and asked questions. Bored, he sort of answered them.

I am reminded of a recent quote given to me: “She wasn’t his everything, but he was never her forever.” It hits me, like a brick against teeth. Nails on an Emory board. Lies topple over one another on heaps of pragmatism.

I am reminded I am an irrelevant placeholder in his view. Of course he moved on. Of course he is unbothered. He used me. He didn’t and doesn’t care.

I spiral further, remembering what broke us up. He isn’t just a cheater; he’s a monster who allegedly elicited what he believed to be a child. He was arrested via a sting operation. Someone had watched his online behavior and believed him a threat to society. This wasn’t an “oops” or an accident. He had explicit information and consciously chose to pursue it.

My stomach is a corkscrew, bile twisting itself to catch up. Tears reach the surface.

“Of course he has moved on,” I say aloud to no one. “And he probably is still meeting with escorts and hook-ups. None of it mattered. None of it was real. The man I loved didn’t exist. And I was no one to him.”