When I Reactivated My OKCupid Profile

Take three attempts to remember your password from when you last logged into OKCupid.

Try to remember why you felt your OKCupid password should be different from the two or three passwords you normally use.

Laugh for a second about how your password has the word “poop” in it. Make a mental note to change your password soon.

Read a dialog box that reminds you that you’ll be unable to disable your OKCupid account for the next week. Consider this.

Be shocked and then unsurprised at how little the news feed has changed in the time you’ve been away.

Revisit all the regulars: the blonde musician you slept with on your first date that you see on the G train sometimes, the tiny redhead who introduced you to sushi bombs in Bushwick, the brunette account executive who used to work at an ad agency you used to work at. Their profiles will be exactly the same as before you disabled your account.

Look at your profile, and immediately upload new pictures because you don’t like the way your face fat, mouth corners or hair looks in the old ones. Delete them. It’s only been a few months, but you’re much prettier now.

Stress about the details of your profile, and recognize how much you’ve gone through since you last logged into OKCupid. Briefly consider your personal growth, and let yourself be impressed and happy for a moment. Then freak out again and realize you’re a different person now, and vow to tear down your bio and totally rewrite it.

Check your Quiver. It will never be populated with anybody worth contacting. Without a doubt, it will always be full of people who love sports, listen to the Foo Fighters on purpose, or are making duckface in their profile photos. Vow to auto-delete your Quiver from here on out.

Check your inbox. Pause at an old message from the girl for whom you disabled your OKCupid account in the first place.

Exhale. Listen to “Some Racing, Some Stopping” by Headlights on your iPod. Let your heart break a little bit.

Quickly obsess over the things you never got to do together: the weekend day trip to Montauk, the mock duck you wanted to introduce her to in the East Village, the concert in Prospect Park that you still have the tickets for, held up by a G train magnet on your fridge.

Remember your first everything. Remember how excellent it felt to hold hands when she got back from a few weeks in Mexico. Remember how excited you got when you discovered you both knew what euchre was. Remember the first dinner she cooked for you.

Remember that there’s a reason why it ended.

Reassure yourself that it’s OK that it ended.

Know that you’ll be friends one day. Know that the emotional scar tissue came with memories and life lessons. Know that even though an empty bed sucks, you’ll get over it because you always do.

For the love of God, close out of OKCupid and finish work. See The Avengers with a friend you should probably spend more time with. Give him the 30-second version of the past three months of your love life.

Take the L train home, and let yourself feel a little sad when you listen to Mogwai. Pass her subway stop before you get to yours and remember the last time you took the train to work together. Make eyes at the girl sitting across the train from you with the composition notebook bursting at the seams.

Walk into your apartment and see the towel she used when she was last at your apartment hanging over your door.

Put it in the hamper — the towel and everything else. Send your memories along with the towel to the laundromat to get them cleaned up.

Promise to keep making mistakes, to meet new people you can laugh with, to find new ways to make out with someone.

Start over.

Don’t shut yourself off.

You have a new message.