Lock yourself in your room. Don't speak to anyone for the entire day. Read every book on your bookshelf, get lost in the stories and forget about what is eating your heart. Wrap yourself in blankets and force yourself to fall asleep. When the nightmares wake you, hide in the closet, hide under the bed. Your mind is the monster, your life is the nightmare, put them in their place. When they grace their cold fingers across the skin of your cheek, lean into their touch. Accept their arms around you and fall asleep to the sound of your own screams.
2. Look at yourself in the mirror. Take off all your clothes. Poke at every unseemly bulge and birthmark until you are huddled in a corner clutching your knees to your chest, trying to convince yourself that you are trapped somewhere inside this thing they call your body. Then, cry, that's all you can do in this moment.
3. Let your mind run wild. Hate yourself for thinking that and that and that. Listen as your thoughts tiptoe around in your head, and cross your fingers when your conscience hears the echo of her footsteps in the hidden basement when she steps on the secret door. That is where you locked away everything too difficult to express and every haunting thing you swallowed whole. Squeeze your eyes shut when she pulls back the rug and rips open the latch.
4. Curse your mother. Blame her when the sun will not set the way you wish it would. Call her names when you find yourself wanting to be anywhere else, anyone else. Pack your bags with everything you'll ever need. When you reach for hope, don't find it, and want to fall into her arms, open the door. Walk in circles. Wait until the feeling passes. When it does, empty the bag.
5. When the weight is too heavy to carry, invest in love. Open your darkest closets. Set forth all your demons upon the brightest light to have reached your dark core. When he collapses under its heavy force, question your own strength. He will leave you, and you will envy him. You will still be trapped inside.
6. Bruise your knuckles on the wall. Scratch at your legs until they bleed. Rip out your hair. Chew the skin off of your lips. Send tar into your lungs. ****** your liver and then your brain cells. Destroy yourself. When you can't recognize yourself in the mirror anymore, run. Don't bother putting on shoes. Run away from your reflection. Don't stop until you don't know where you are. Scream. Scream as if somebody will hear you, they won't. Scream as if somebody will save you, they won't. Watch the sunset. Walk home in the dark.
7. Don't trust his forevers. When he tries make this promise to you, hit him. Yell at him. Call him a liar. When he tries to explain, put your hand over his mouth. When he tries to apologize, do not forgive him. Let him make love to you, accept his apology when his fingers stain your skin purple and blue, forgive him for the names he calls you, believe you deserve it when he walks away. But never, ever, forgive him for promising to spend forever with you.
8. Learn how to play the guitar, the piano, the bass, perfect your singing. Cry songs out as if you feel these lyrics. Believe this is your outlet. Convince yourself it's helping. Write music about him. Write music about all of them, not your lovers, the ghosts. Serenade them.
9. Quit when you only hear his voice in the notes. Smash the instruments. Decide that you were never really better. Close the door. Stay in bed for a day. Two days. Four days. Only get up to have a smoke, to grab the blade, to use the toilet.
10. Fall in love with silence. Say the unutterable words. Make sentences out of your wounds. Create stanzas with your soul. Whisper the final works in the dark. These aren't your words. This is the work of whoever you were before. When the words fall from your lips with ease, the process is complete. She is gone. These are the final pieces of her. Soon enough you'll be empty of these too.