Assignments like this are right up my alley. #2 Have a howling bawl session on your bathroom floor when you are home alone, if your neighbors aren't close enough to hear you and call the cops. If they are, howl into your pillow. #3 Write the most haunting poem you can, emphasizing — or even exaggerating — the horror of the whole experience. #4 Write a fictionalized account of it all, with a satisfying end in which all the characters achieve their highest and best good. Don’t be too cryptic about the amazing life lesson the character playing you learns. This story may wind up being too obvious and trite for anything but a Hallmark movie, but write it anyway. #5 Make yourself a Spotify playlist with songs that relate to what you’re going through. At least 50 songs. The first half should be songs that foster wallowing in despair. The second half should help you dry your eyes and move forward. Play on repeat. #6 If you are safe to drive, get in the car and go. Just drive. If someone’s going through it with you, take them along. Sometimes it’s easier to talk about hard stuff if you are both looking forward. #7 There’s not much that the top of a mountain doesn’t make better. Go for a hike. #8 Let your favorite animal comfort you. #9 Go bowling or to the batting cages. #10 Quit fucking vague-booking about it. Talk or write about what you’re going through and speak in Exact Nature. If you tell people what you’re going through, chances are someone you know has been through it too, and they can help. If you talk about it now, someone else you know may go through it later and remember that you did too. Your candor now will help them later. And if there’s someone to be offended, so what. As Anne Lamott says, “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”