You Know Love Is Over When -- Andrew Nimitz

You know love is over when you don’t want to call her … and when you bypass her calls – to inconveniently hear later at your own convenience.  You know it’s over when her smell does not remind you of her, but only of sweat.

You can recount more cons that pros – more bags n punches vs. passionate throws.   Her face is vague now, whereas before you could trace her contours to within a millimeter.   You avoid her name, as if speaking it would summon some abysmal terror.

It is replaced with contempt:  for the wrongs she put on you; for the resentment for being played a fool – and now being adamantly unable to put any value to her words or actions.   Now, all that she says and/or does is simply another ruse to deplete you of whatever is left to be taken.

You know love is over, because you can compare your after-feelings to that you have for another ex-girlfriend, whom you can still think of fondly.   This one, what’s her name – you still think of … but not fondly.

And now it’s the flu, you just want it to be over:  the aches, the pains, the fever, the stuck-to-the-couch momentum.   But it lingers on, it drags on, it molds on.  James Taylor’s Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone applies also to when she’s here.

You know love is over when a week goes by, and nothing happens.  You try to cough up another memory, but it refuses to be dislodged.   No, you can’t recover that quickly … it is the flu after all. 

Funny, you don’t even think about sex with her either.   It’d be like watching the same porn flick for the worse-teenth time.   The last few times with her, you were trying your best to think of the Starbuck’s woman, or that new actress, just to maintain your motivation.  

No, love is over.   It is best that it is, so that you can minimize your losses.  There is no energy or motivation to even fight with her; what’s there to win?   Take your last breath, lay content in the coffin, and rise again tonight as the undead.   Watch more TV without watching it.   Get a coffee-high and go out, but for what?   It just takes too much energy, and your eyes, legs, feet, and arms are all too heavy for movement.

Love is over; war is over.   Sure, there will be some small firefights to come, but it really is over.   Had anyone won?   The damages can certainly be tallied.

The phone rings; it’s her.   I’ll get it later – I want to hear a voicemail, but only to feel the syphoning even more.   It is a needle, another injection of emptiness – to have a phone call break the vacuum of isolation, and to reinforce it.

You know love is over, because it hurts to feel.   It is a sickening crawl in your liver, unable to purge the toxins from your body.   Recovery, it’s all you can think about – when will it be done?

Love is over when you don’t have to think about it.  Love is over when you have to think about it.   Love is over before you are even aware of it.

Former patterns have no meaning.   What was I doing that for?  Where did it get me?  Love like there’s no tomorrow – yeah, ok, and if one does, there definitely won’t be.   Love is a battlefield, with sickening, dead, bloated bodies gazing at you.   Love is like oxygen … or lack thereof.

Wickedly and sadistically interesting, how such an intangible and ill-defined concept can pull one down.  Sex does not do that – you can enjoy sex, and when it is over, you are ready again an hour or so later.   Love?  You need a century to go at it again.

Love is over, it is.  But, it is going to take a long time for it to really be over.