A couple of years ago, my roommates and I had our hearts unceremoniously smashed into hamburger meat all within the span of a couple weeks. Because heartbreak always descends at the most convenient times, we also happened to be painstakingly unemployed against our willful campaign against so. What does one do with endless amounts of time and a complete lack of faith in human relating? Well I’ll tell you.
10:00 AM: Wake up, crawl into roommates bed. (Whoever’s room is the darkest is preferable.)
10:05 AM: Debrief on the honest state of your despair.
11:15 AM: Take turns crying. (The act of taking turns is very important. Crying in unison often creates a snowball affect that derails the rest of the day’s schedule.)
11:30 AM: Turn on a blockbuster from your childhood that is both cathartic and mind numbing at the same time. (Twilight for instance, is a great option.)
11:35 AM: Take turns falling asleep. (The act of taking turns is again, vital. Napping in unison means you will sleep for 12 hours straight and again, derail the schedule.)
2:00 PM: Shower and change into a different pair of pajamas.
3:00 PM: Repeat all previous morning tasks.
6:00 PM: Order a pizza.
7:00 PM: Repeat all previous morning tasks while eating the pizza.
9:30 PM: Go to bed.
We continued this daily routine for about 10 days and retrospectively dubbed it, “Heartbreak Bootcamp.” As commonplace and unimaginative as the process may seem, the practical and purposeful designation of time and organization of effort into our wallowing propelled us into a sort of sacred state of growth. We stayed inside and stayed together. We voiced our pain freely and regularly. We reminded each other to reluctantly eat and drink water and brush our hair. We sat with our loss uninterrupted and unalone in vigil, holding a candle in the dark for one another. This ritual has become an elemental part of our lives anytime we feel kicked, be it by a breakup or a bad day. Talk, cry, sleep, reset, pizza.
Lots of cultures maintain sacred rituals, reserved for mourning or commemorating huge life events. But Heartbreak Bootcamp is not about acknowledging the big elevations in the long line of your fate. Heartbreak Bootcamp is a rewarding and fairly enjoyable way to honor the truth that the blues will always visit for little while, and that can be a beautiful reality too if faced with the right perspective.
We all carry so much heartache and are forced to sling it around at warp speed between the deadlines and the bus schedules and the extra shifts. We triage; distract from the hurt, numb the gnawing, put on a good face… and then either collapse or look up to find a bunch of scar tissue one day from a wound we barely even remember.
To live is to face change. To face change is to feel the loss of something cut away from you from time to time. To mourn properly is to rest in the in-between and make the best of it with your loved ones. That is Heartbreak Bootcamp.
Heartbreak Bootcamp is also conveniently scalable! Bad day at work? Bootcamp for an evening. Messy divorce? Bootcamp for a year! Feeling good? Take a load off anyway and order a pizza. While we all have bills to pay and toilet paper to go buy, we can always schedule a little time to romanticize the reality of inevitable heartache.
So that’s what this series is supposed to be; small acts of love you can give yourself to make peace with your blues. There will be two activities with each post: one to help you feel better and one to make feeling bad bearable.
The Activities
The One to Make You Feel Better:
Discover your ultimate sob movie and sob to it.
Maybe you already have a go to or maybe you’ve never felt the glory of purposefully sobbing uninterrupted to the sounds and sights of a soul wrenching film. There is no catharsis quite as relieving. It’s good to have a solid go to locked and loaded waiting for those nights when you want to crawl out of your skin. Mine is the Baz Luhrmann Romeo + Juliet. Close the blinds, turn off the lights, put your phone in another room. Wrap yourself in a giant blanket with a cup of tea and think of nothing but a fictional world of conflict for 2 lovely hours!
The One to Make Feeling Bad Bearable:
Go get ice cream with a friend.
Remember when ice cream seemed to be an ecstatic cure all for any woe? At what age do we start telling ourself ice cream doesn’t do that? I firmly believe the effect is never lost we just kind of forget about it. Some things in life are simply unbearable and the only way through it is to have a companion and a load of sugar. Wait for some lovely weather and go get a giant ice cream cone with a friend. Even if it doesn’t help, it can’t hurt.