4.

They say breaking up

is hard to do.

I suppose it is really,

even harder than

breaking down.

Breaking down

is no big deal,

maybe a little

undignified,

a little pride

lost, a little

coin toss

of who will

care or be

there or

where

you'll end

up when

you're done

crying (

everybody

knows you

cry when

you break

down)

But breaking up,

breaking up

is different

because I'm not

talking about the

kind of breakup

that happens

when you get

fed up with Bobby

and tell him you're

in different places

in your lives and

you'd be better off

in separate places.

I'm talking about

the kind of breaking up

that happens when you've

gotten to the point where breaking

is the only option, but unlike breaking down

you don't cry and carry on until you feel better

only to return to the place you've already been before

before you lost your sense of pride and couldn't take the

weight of trying to suppress the need to be held like children

get to be when they scrape their knee and run to their parents

no breaking up is different, it's more like realizing, it's not going to

be the same anymore, but you're not just going to sit there and cry

like you've fallen off your bike, you might cry, but different tears the

kind that tell you that you're getting somewhere, the kind that bring relief

the kind you cry when you're getting over something, so you cry and you breathe

and you breathe again and lift your head up, and you breathe again and wipe your eyes

and walk out of the room, with your head still up, and your heart still beating and your pride

still in tact, because maybe breaking up is hard to do, but point is simply, breaking up gets you up