Death of a Clown

It's 4 am exactly. She slumps in front of her computer screen, marking the time and wondering why or how she could even notice such an insignificant thing through the haze of pain she feels clouding her vision. Haze of pain. Nice way to say tears. There's a vague sensation of defeat somewhere in her chest, as if she just lost a game of volleyball in front of a gym full of people. No, more like losing the superbowl in a stadium packed to the rafters.
The question of who was playing on the winning team floats through her mind, and she takes a moment to mull over it. The sadness laps at the edges of her heart and for a moment she can't breathe, can only cry and hope that her control doesn't slip and she doesn't start screaming.
Regaining control is hard and distinctly out of the realm of "fun".
The person playing on the other team.. the team that beat her ass... was another version of herself. The romantic, idealistic one who thought everything would be okay. The one with a heart, who couldn't bear to go the other way once that heart was involved. The one who almost lost her mind when he left. The one who died when it became apparent that he didn't care.
The side that remains ... knows that after this it won't feel anything for a long time. The part of her that's left knows what it feels like to have to turn off emotion in order to keep from breaking apart. She knows that nothing will ever make it better, and so accepts the scar and covers it up. she knows that pretending nothing is wrong is the first step to pushing the pain back and forgetting it. The side that's left feels anger, feels sadness, but pushes it back because she must. She puts it in the grave with the dead optimist.
She knows that the pain may fade, but memories of him never will.
She knows that in time, the other side will grow back, and drag her into more trouble. And she'll take those scars just like these.
She knows all this and yet she prays that one day she'll make the right choice. That one day there will be one who makes both halves of her stand up and take note. Maybe one day there won't be any more scars to cover.
Or maybe she'll just kill that idealist.

And he doesn't even know that he was the only one she was thinking of on her birthday. He doesn't know that all he had to do was remember it.