On days like today, I buy books.

Four of them to be exact.

My favourite poet, an author I follow on Instagram, a professor with 12 rules for life and a social scientist who’s going to tell me how to belong to myself, and no one else.

I hold them in my hands and I imagine they’ll tell me how to be stronger, whenever I feel weak. I imagine I’ll become a person who reads, more than just once a month.

On weeks like this week, I make lists.

Many of them, over and over again.

I make lists of everything I need to do, to not feel the way I do in this moment. Buy new jeans, buy a good book (check), workout more. I imagine that if I start to come apart, at least I’ll know what’s going to hold me together.

But I already know that. I’ve been here before. 2 years ago, 3 and a half years ago, 4 years ago.

The first time someone broke my heart, my world collapsed. So I picked it up and put it back together and then the second time came when I let him drop it once more, half a year later.

The third time, I ripped my heart out with my own two hands and called it self-love. It was, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.

This time, I thought I’d see it coming. I thought, even when things have cracks in them doesn’t mean they’re broken. So why have we fallen apart?

You remind me of myself. Of two years ago, when my mind was spinning out of control and I just needed, some time. Isn’t it funny how history repeats itself?

We’ve come full circle except we swapped stories. I guess we know how it feels now, to be in the other person’s shoes.

On weeks like this week I listen to Dermot Kennedy, non-stop. I drink several cups of tea, a day, and I avoid my bedroom until it’s time for me to sleep.

I remind myself, I’m more than okay. My body is simply healing from the piece that it lost and if I look in the mirror I can see that even without it I am still whole – even if I don’t feel it, I am still whole. There are plenty parts of the body that we can adjust to live without.

On days like today, I remember that most of the time, I consider myself an average writer. It’s never been about being good, or not, it’s how I feel after I get words down onto a page. How my head feels lighter, how everything feels like it’s coming together or being held together in a way it wasn’t before.

On days like today, I remember that most of the time, I consider myself an average writer, but when I go through a breakup, I will become even better.

I have novels on heartbreak in the form of loose leaf sheets of paper in a box in my closet, and the journals on my window sill. They’re in the note section of my phone, the drafts on my computer and the posts on this blog.

For the most part, I consider myself an average writer, but when my heartbreaks I beg for the moment that I can take this pain and make it into something not average, but exceptional.