I take the tomato and cut it in half.  Then I take each half, and cut it into wedges.  I lay them down on their sides, and sprinkle salt on them.  Opening the kitchen drawer that serves as a home for my utensils, I grab a fork, stab a wedge, and put it in my mouth.  The salt brings out the flavour of the tomato, and this small ritual reminds me.  Every time, it reminds me.  Of her.  Of the first person who meant something to me that I lost.

Even now, years later, and the grief stays with me.  What is it they started saying in the past few years?  "Grief is love with no place to go."  I think that's it.  It sounds right, anyway.  And it's true.  When it comes to someone who left because death took them, at least.

All these small rituals that compose my life.  Ones I've formed on my own.  Like always smelling a tea bag before I place it in the cup to steep.  Or taking my camera with me whenever I go hiking.  Or making food for people I love.
Or the rituals I have that I picked up from others.  Saying "hot hot hot" as I eat a certain brand of chip.  Moving my hands as I talk.  Giving really tight hugs.

And then, there's the rituals we formed together.
Checking out local coffee shops.  Driving around with no destination.  Pointing out every jeep on the road.  Countless others.

How can life be filled with so many rituals, so many reminders, of the people who have impacted me in some way, left behind trails of themselves, fingerprints on the canvas of my heart, and hurt so much because of it?

It's like everything results in loss.
People will always leave, sooner or later.  By choice or otherwise.

So tell me, what is the point?
What is the point of trying, of making an effort, of pouring my love into people that I cannot depend upon, people who say things but don't mean them, people who don't follow through, people who say they love me but fail to show it, people who will eventually leave because no matter how hard I try, how much I try to become who they seem to want me to be, how "good" I am, it is never, ever, ever enough.

You once told me that I was a romantic in the true sense; in the sense that eventually, everything ends in tragedy.
Will it be tragedy if I take my life into my own hands?  I couldn't stop you from leaving, I couldn't make you love me, or choose to keep your vows, but I can choose to keep mine.  Until death do we part...right?

I used to think love wasn't worth the risk of the pain, the heartache.  I forced myself not to feel for the majority of my life, because to feel was to be in pain.  Then you came along, and I decided you were worth the risk.  The risk of feeling, feeling everything and feeling it all deeply, the risk of loving, because I thought my heart was safe in your hands.

Never again.

I am not going to make the mistake ever again of feeling things.  Of deciding that love is worth it.  Of finally finding someone who was home, someone I could give all the love away that I had hidden inside of me for so long.

I am going to go back to the way I was.  Not feeling anything.  Hardly ever crying.  Not loving anyone or anything.  I know now my younger self was right; love is not worth it.

Nothing is worth it.
(Definitely not me.)