Ex-lovers Ruin the Best Things, Should We Choose to Share Them

"I smell you in my secret pack of cigarettes. You were in the whiff of Spring I caught last weekend in the melting January snow. You are mixed with the detergent in my bed sheets. Get out of my nose, please."

The worst thing about dating another person is the pieces of you they take with them when they leave. When with romantically involved with someone, people tend to expose them to the little things in life which make them unique: favorite movies, music; secrets; birthmarks. Naturally. We like to expose our boyfriends/girlfriends to things we love (or hate) so that they can know us on deep personal levels. Sadly, these are things shared when the relationship is running smoothly with little or no regard to what happens when the inevitable (in most cases) break-up presents itself. We can easily give back materials: the terrifying cardboard box routine, complete with tshirts, CDs (or mp3 players as technology progresses?), hairbrushes or anything else left at your boyfriend's place to facilitate spending nights there. That is the easy part. The difficulty arises when you go to watch "The Princess Bride", your favorite childhood movie that once got you through the rough times, but now presents rough times of its own. You watched that with him. It was to reconcile a fight, you cuddled on the uncomfortable couch in your old apartment sophomore year. You ate poorly made pancakes and pointed out the boom mic that appears 20 minutes into the movie, due to poorly trained sound tecs, or so you presume. He hated it. You made up.

The movie is now tainted by the ever present memory of your relationship.

Then you start working out, tanning, making yourself more desirable to the opposite sex, because, let's face it, you really let the fat accumulate when you were dating someone who already accepted you for you. Plus, the consoling break-up cookies and ice cream didn't do much for your newly single figure either.
You check yourself out in the mirror one night-naked, of course, for the first time, just to see if you've still got it. You're sweaty and toned and oh god, that's right. "My birthmark, the one on the back of my thigh!" You think to yourself, realizing that he was the only one who knew about it because he was the only one who could have seen the back of your thigh. Then it becomes partially his thigh and his birthmark. His knowledge of its presence gives him a sort of entitlement to your body and then nothing, nothing!, is yours!

You now realize that they have imprinted themselves on you.

Now that you don't have him, but he still has you, what have you got?