When the wound is still fresh, it hurts. It keeps taking your mind away from everything you do. You keep thinking what is it that you could have done to not be wounded in the first place. Was meeting them for the first time a mistake? Was growing too close, too soon a mistake? You keep questioning everything every time you sit down to change the dressing. Every time someone asks you how it happened, you tell them a story that they’d believe.

Oh maybe I was asking for too much? Oh maybe we were never compatible? Oh maybe we were not in the right headspace.

When the wound dries up, you move around cautiously not to break it wide open again. You start deleting photos. You delete the playlists. You start trying to read more often. You try to not talk about what happened. Call your friends over for a movie.

You look at the wound once in a while, and that’s only when it itches. The itch reminds you of why it’s there. The itch tells you that it’s going away. Sometimes, the pain of the itch is a lot more than the pain of the wound itself.

When the wound has finally healed, you take life head on. It looks like a little scar now, which you will easily forget about in some days. It’s a memory you wear wherever you go, and now it only reminds you of the good parts that existed before it came in.

The little jump of the heart, the slide of the gaze and the sprint of thought, is now all you think about and wish to explore, all over again. The very next person you meet, holds your hand, looks you in the eye and you feel it all again. You feel the same rush, the same energy and that feeling of being on the edge.

That’s where they hold your hand, look at the scar and ask you – oh, how did this happen? You look at the scar, you look at them. Ah, nothing. You say.