Forget the five stages of grief, I got six. If you’ve ever felt silly chatting up an ex or meditating on a bar of soap post-breakup, I’ve done it, too. In my book, wearing sweatpants for days beats winning a speedy gold medal in recovery. But no worries, I’ve applied some voodoo to this article, so hopefully after reading it, we’ll never have to go through another breakup again.

I. THE VERBOSE IMMEDIATE AFTERMATH

I inundate all my close friends with multiple recounts of how things derailed and especially my guesses of the reasons. Suddenly, my list of close friends expands from a couple and grows to a handful, as I track them down across time zones.

I may forget one detail of the story or I might tell a slightly skewed twist. Smart friends’ analyses are always comforting, even though I never follow their advice.

A few hours later, I ping these poor friends all over again.

Once I exhaust my friends, I proceed to chat up all my exes and old crushes. I flirt with them in overt language without feeling any guilt or reservations. An old crush and now dear friend once said, “I think we have a tendency to look back to our past, which is safe because it’s over, when we need reassurance–especially from people we know who care(d) about us.”

II. SLOW DETAILS

While I’m a conceptual person in general, I tend to notice every minute detail when I go through a breakup.

“The used up Japanese temple scented candle is still sitting on top of the toilet water tank lid because you lit it a few weeks ago.”

I want to remember these facts as I walk around my apartment because he was important, and thus everything that he had touched must be.

“You used up my bar of soap without saying anything, and now a thin sheet sits in the soap dish in the wall every time I reach for it.”

If I were to forget these details, that means I choose to forget him–but, but, I wanted him.

“The cork for this bottle of spicy Garnacha you opened when we watched Never Let Me Go is still stuck in the screw.”

III. QUIET TIME

I feel alone but also incredibly strong. I listen to New Age-y meditations that inflate my sense of self. I drag myself to back-to-back yoga classes, repeating a teacher’s mantra that if you can hold your own body weight, you can do anything. I still cook for two, but that just means I get to eat something yummy right away when I get home the next evening (yay!).

I read a lot of Mary Oliver on my high school English teacher’s recommendation: 

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves. 

(excerpted from Wild Geese)

IV. OOPS

I feel bad calling him, and I knew I’d feel bad. But it feels good to hear the phone ring anyway. I’ll be kind to myself.

I watch a serious, romantic, and sad movie, along the likes of Wong Kar-wai. Movies help me de-intellectualize my feelings. I tell myself that diving deeply and obsessively into how I feel is necessary for me to recover. My job is to to feed my brain mush and material, then leave it alone to do its work.

V. A FAST FLASH

Often, when I think I’m all fine, a dramatic flash hits unexpectedly and choppily.

“When he said no, we couldn’t get back together, he leaned back against my wheely black chair with a loose arm. I sat on the bed and stared upwards towards him. His face was tight, and he was wearing the striped Marc Jacobs socks I gave him for his birthday.”

I add soft rouge lighting to the scene when my actual lights were yellow-white.

I weave these fictional nuances into my story. I make them more vivid and truthful so that I believe that I could access them later on.

VI. THE AFTER-AFTERMATH

Details fade, d’oh.

I used to think that memorizing the details would help me preserve “us,” but perhaps I was just preserving myself.

I was preserving what I put into the relationship, how he had changed the way I saw things–which I usually like. I was also preserving my dignity and judgment–how at some points, it was alright and I was right. Here’s where my competitiveness kicks in, and hey, that’s when I know I am myself again.