remembrance of grief (so over it)

I must give the last three steps:

5. Get home and cry until your eyes are so puffy you cannot open or close, just hold them in little slits and squint. Cry so much your head feels puffy and blow your nose so many times the light begins to hurt. Sit in the dark with your fiance who kneels by the sofa and holds you and says nothing (and that's perfect--exactly what you need him to do). Cry until you've forgotten what set you off in the first place; listen as he desperately offers all kinds of events to cheer you up (dinner, a trip to the library, a six pack of hard cider when you've quit drinking a month and a half ago--just for a while, because you have been stressed and need to clear out the cobwebs).

6. Go to bed at eight o'clock because it's the only you can do any more. Fall asleep to the sound of your fiance pounding nails into the wall because your kitchen has been in upheaval (godawful cabbage roses) and the pounding doesn't hurt your head as much as it jars your heart. Wake up and for a few minutes there's that sweet forgetfulness--you have forgotten that the day before your principal said he'd have to "let you go" (he used those words, those awful words you imagined him saying months before, the situation kept changing, and you, for once in your life, were not pessimistic, so that's why it threw you off so much). And for a minute, it throbbed and hurt again, but only for a minute.

7. Because, in some large way, you realize ... you are now free.