How to Fall Out of Love

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First, fall apart. You will stay in bed for three consecutive days, only getting up to refill your water glass and empty your bladder. Watch television until your eyes hurt. Listen to Rufus Wainwright until the music feels like the soundtrack to your misery. You will decide that you’re never getting out of bed, even when you’re supposed to go back to work, but you won’t mean it.

When you finally crawl out of bed because you cannot have dirty hair for one more second, you will get in the shower and immediately begin sobbing because he left his shampoo behind. You’ll open the bottle to smell the shampoo and think that you will feel better if you use it because then your hair will smell like him. This is a bad idea. Resolve to throw it away. Stand in the shower with your forehead on the tiles until the hot water runs out.

You will invent a variety of theories as to why he is no longer in love with you. He has commitment issues. You have commitment issues. He met someone else. His mother doesn’t really like you after all. He hates your cat. He hates your taste in television. You’re too needy, not needy enough. He was really a CIA agent and, though madly and deeply in love with you, he loves his country more and accepted a dangerous mission that was likely to involve spending ten years under deep cover in a foreign city, probably in the Middle East. He wanted to tell you,but could not because telling you would have put you in danger. You will wonder if you’re losing your mind.

On a daily basis, you will think of something funny and pick up the phone to call him. Hang up when you remember that he doesn’t want to hear from you. You will cry.