How to deal with a breakup?

When dealing with a breakup, you are no longer dealing with the being you broke up with, though it can seem so.

Instead, you are dealing with all those swirling emotions inside you -- perhaps sadness, rage, confusion, more sadness. This swirl of emotions is a new being, who it is true often resembles the ugliest to most beautiful versions of that other being you broke up with. But that other being is gone. This new being is real and here now.

So sit down, and kindly ask those swirling emotions, that new being often making you so uncomfortable, though you quietly do sometimes take comfort in the discomfort, to sit down across from you. See it however you choose. Perhaps as a black blob. Perhaps as a red light. But see it. And smell it, too. Perhaps as a rose. Perhaps gasoline. Give it some fleeting form, as we all have fleeting form, to help you focus. And have a conversation.

Ask it, perhaps, what it's doing here, with you.

Ask it, perhaps, what purpose it serves.

Ask it, perhaps, what it's trying to tell you.

And are you a friend or foe?

And will I grow or wilt because of your presence?

And really, really try to listen.

That swirl of emotions inside you is not you. It is indeed its own being. Like every other relationship in your life -- every single one -- it won't last forever. It serves a purpose. It may be hard to see this with this relationship, as with many other relationships, but it does. Have a quiet and honest discussion, and listen very closely to the answers this being gives, and you may understand some of them now. You will understand more of them later. And soon -- perhaps not soon enough, you will often feel, but soon -- it too will be gone.