I walk the streets of New York trying to start my life anew and I stumble into fossils of what we use to be. Constantly being reminded of what was, stuck between my desire for wanderlust and the city I love.

Hammerstein. A fossil.

I sometimes catch myself smiling at the memories. Laughing. Talking. Crying. Then I have to repeatedly revive myself from a reality that isn’t reality anymore. The gaping hole in my chest where my heart used to be.

Terminal 5. A fossil.

I torture myself. I know this. You know this. But how can I not? Does that make me pathetic ? That despite everything I know and feel, there’s a little slither, buried deep in my soul that wants to go back?

That needs you to need me. For you to feel something.

I am a fossil. Of someone who once loved and can’t anymore.

My heart. My lungs. My skin. My breath. Everything. I am a fossil of a girl that once was. Someone who is gone but not forgotten and she stares me in the face everyday, begging me to bring her back but I’m constantly refusing to.

My first writing award. A fossil.

The piece of paper that almost lit to flames underneath my fingertips. Happiness then clouded by anger, then disgust, then resentment. An achievement that doesn’t feel like it belongs to me.

________________________

I wrote this a little while back when my breakup was still fresh. It’s nearing a year now and needless to say, I’m in my feelings.

Although I can say, my mindset has changed and I’m little more confident in my decisions. Both ones I’ve made in the past and the choices I have yet to make. Not to say that every decision was a good one. But I think there comes a time when one has to step back and realize that things happen. That you can’t go back and those moments right before you make a choice define the surrounding moments.

And they define you.

But you also can’t let that definition haunt you.

Why do people do anything, ever?

I don’t know.

But we’re constantly plagued by the things that should’ve been. The choices we should’ve made. The places we should’ve gone.

We spend most our lives in hindsight. That painful agonizing feeling of wishing we could do something over.

Then comes the endless cycle of moving on and falling back into your feelings.

I am … a walking fossil.

Or at least that’s how it feels right now.

The art of moving on is something to relish in.

Because that means that just like the Phoenix that can rise from its ashes or Roman cities that are beautiful for its ruins. Fossils, are a thing of the past. Something to remember. Something to learn from.

One can discover and re-discover themselves.

If you were meant to stay where you were, you’d still be there.

Cities have fallen for a reason.

And just like the Phoenix, I can rise.