I recently closed a chapter in my romantic life and my feelings have been all over the board. Having more than one love in my life doesn’t insulate me from all the same feelings over a breakup that everyone else feels. When I get sad I tend to cope with humor, and so, one night last week on Twitter, I decided to sketch out my own personal stages of grief:
1) Shock
2) Denial
3) Pain
4) Ice Cream (preferably B & J’s Phish Food or Baskin Robbins Pink Bubblegum)
5) Goth (For you kiddies out there, this is what we used to call Emo, back in the days before Target Brand Emo Gear, when we had to use sharpies to paint our nails black.)
6) Bad Poetry (Look here if you don’t believe me – this stage follows closely on stage 5, and so you need to guard against the very real danger of kohl teardrops smearing all over your paper…)
7) Cheesy Fries (Go ahead – try and convince me that cheese doesn’t solve everything.)
8) Annoyingly Chipper
9) Randomly shagging Twitter pals (This is a still-untested, but recommended stage suggested by Tmame, coincidentally a Twitter pal of mine…)
Thankfully, this is not a linear progression, and so, for at least 4 weeks following a breakup, there are ample excuses for both ice cream and cheesy fries at any hour of the day or night, for purely medicinal reasons, of course.
HAHAHAHAHAH.. wow.. and you aren’t kidding, I recognize many of these stages and they do overlap occasionally.. I’m not sure I recommend ice cream and cheesy fries in the same bowl, however, no matter how right it seems at the time.
I believe I have my own stages as well, some of which match yours. In addition
– tequila
– turtling
– blaming self and jumping headfirst into a swirling mass of pathetic self-pitying yuck that isn’t attractive to anyone
– beating self up over being a self-pitying mass of yuck
– more tequila
– eventually believing in love again and giving my heart away in an exuberant burst of optimism
not necessarily in that order…
That is really weird; those are my exact two favorite ice creams as well. Pink bubblegum because it’s pink, tasty, and has bubblegum. Phish food because it has chocolate…in the shape of the cutest fish ever.
I should definitely incorporate these things into my stages of grief.
Erm, Phish Food & Pink Bubblegum ice cream? As a Brit I am now convinced America is some kind of strange parallel universe that those of us in Europe will never understand. However, I identify with your stages of grief (even if Moscow Mules feature fairly soon in the process with me). I’ve also used random sex as a grief analgesic (amazingly including Twitter friends). Anyway, as a Twitter friend, my hand is raised.
Just look after yourself, OK?
I vote for the random twitter friend shag. *raises hand and jumps up and down* Pick me! Pick me! Pick me!
Hang in there darling. You’re a brave, strong, and sexy woman.