5 Things I Do The Week After Getting Dumped

1. Completely lose it in a public place. I like to make it dramatic. Crouch down on the floor, put my hands over my face, rock back and forth. That homeless guy pacing back and forth with the Walkman? He’s got nothing on me.  Some places I have totally lost it after being dumped:

• An Amtrak station
• On public transportation (there was a four month period where I cried on the bus everyday. The upside is no one wants to sit next to you.)
• The parking lot during a rehearsal dinner
• An art gallery opening
• At least six different Starbucks (Note: Starbucks is basically made for public meltdowns. People will leave you alone and it gives you the chance to sit in a warm place for a long period of time. Plus, the last time this happened, a stranger gave me a cake pop.)

2. Switch to a cappuccino based diet. I no longer consume solid food. For at least five days I will survive exclusively on coffee. I will spend a lot of time in cafes and restaurants because I can’t stand to be at home but I won’t eat. This coffee diet will give me the energy to recount the story of being dumped to as many people as possible. As a result of this, I will also lose a dramatic amount of weight in a short period of time, which at this point, will seem like a big upside.

3. Deal with the internet. The first time I was dumped I was thirteen. Destroying the relics of our relationship was simple. All I had to do was take his number off speed dial and bury all our secret notes in an Airwalk shoebox. Some things I have to deal with now include:

• Facebook relationship status, defriending and detagging
• Making him invisible on gChat (although not blocking him because eventually I need to talk to him about those books I need back.)
• Removing him from my Google+ friends circle
• Unfollowing him on Tumblr
• Running out the clock on our Words with Friends and Scramble with Friends games (Simply forfeiting them seems too aggressive.)

4. Stop sleeping. The thing about going to sleep is that eventually you have to wake up, and waking up means remembering what happened. I’ll stay awake for at least three days to try and avoid this feeling, although it never works. And there will be that moment, there always is, sometime around 4 AM in the middle of another episode of NCIS, where I literally lose my breath as I realize the last movie we saw together is now the last movie we saw together, and that we will never take that trip up North, or eat PinkBerry, or finish watching The Wire. I’ll think about these things and I’ll gasp.

5. Ask questions. Why does this keep happening to me? How could there be anyone better than him? At what precise moment did I go wrong? Weren’t we happy? Do I have to join eHarmony? Singles yoga? How could anyone ever love me with my weird toenail thing? And the scariest one of all, what do I do now?

There are no answers.