10 Easy Steps to Getting Over a Breakup

Step 1: cry. whenever you need to. Become that girl who cries in public. Turn crying in public into a fine art. Find new and creative way of weeping in front of strangers. Alternatively become dishonest or isolate yourself.

Step 2: Take regular meals. Eat cherries. don’t spit the stones. Save them.

Step 3: Savor the truth. Even "no", especially when it stings, practice saying "brokenhearted" or "hole in my chest" instead of "fine". Never "fine"--retire that word from your vocabulary for a while. 

Step 4: Get adequate exercise. Enjoy the best cardio of your life sobbing on you bicycle passing mountain ranges that are too beautiful to describe. Keep going for weeks and weeks until the signs disappear, until it’s just you and the sky, until you don’t know where you are anymore.  

Step 5: Reach out. Let other people in. Let someone that you’ll probably never see again comfort you with a steady haze and a warm grip on your shoulder while you bawl on the phone to your mother in a crowded cafeteria. 

Step 6: Repot plants. Move furniture. Make your space new. Rip out the hard wood floors. Plant a cherry blossom in the center of your bedroom. 

Step 7: maintain your regular routine. Show up to work to cry in the little back room nobody ever goes in because the coffee there sucks. 

Step 8: Meet interesting people. Keep busy. Read War and Peace in one sitting. 

Step 9: Get plenty of rest. Or don’t. When loss carves cannons beneath your bed, sleep with scraps. When sorrow flows into a bottomless pool by the bookcase, when you are thirsty and wistful sinking deeper into midnight, drink up dawn. 

Step 10: Know that some great change is manifesting itself on the shape of your bones. Maintain your inner strength, flex that spine and accept every dangerous gift life throws your way. This is a piece of the meaning you will someday offer life.