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I Tried Dopamine Fasting to Get Over My Ex
The detox fad is trending but can it heal the brokenhearted?
It’s been five years, and I still can’t walk past our park bench. From a distance, I see lovers sitting where we sat, laughing where we laughed, and holding hands where we held hands. Its forest green paint has faded to a dull puce, and I can just make out the bent plank with the raised nail that he always put his jacket over. Sometimes spasms of pain would hit my stomach, and he would pull me closer, holding me until it passed.
They say chemo destroys your memory. But that’s just something the doctors say to scare you into taking it seriously.
My mind never faltered. But my heart was left on that park bench.
I am blaming the wrong organ. It’s really my brain that haunts me. Since childhood, my mind has always imprisoned memories and thrown away the key. But after Carlos* and I broke up, I became convinced I could find that key. I would unlock the memories and set them free. No. I would obliterate them. I would take the part of my brain that remembered and, with a surgeon’s precision, lobotomize him out of my past.
The platitude says, “Time heals all wounds.” But the ticking of the clock never dulls the pain of loss. Only forgetting takes the sharp edges off our memory…
