Your Ex-Lover Is Dead!

A woman’s voice woke me at Sophie-Charlotte-Platz—not a real one, just the U-Bahn announcement—and I stepped off with no memory of having boarded. A week out of a relationship and already navigating the city on pure autopilot. Progress of a sort.

Thomas, Hannah, and Kathi had the prescription ready: a lot of alcohol, immediately. So I went to Thomas’s birthday party and worked through anything that looked liquid, made out with some equally wrecked blonde at Kosmos, and ended the night in a long faithful session over my bathroom toilet. Genuinely restorative. The strange thing is—it actually worked. I woke up lighter.

The phone died the same week. My old Siemens brick, veteran of something like four relationships over five years, gave up right on cue. Almost poetic. I didn’t want to carry it anymore anyway—went to the nearest phone store and came home with an LG Shine, which is slim and beautiful and built around a pink logo. Apparently that’s my brand in more ways than one.

Ana says the real answer is just letting go, which is correct and completely useless. As a short-term fix, though: drink yourself hollow, buy something new, get your hair cut, follow your instincts wherever they point. It’s not a cure. More like setting a broken bone by feel—rough, approximate, and still better than leaving it alone. One bonus I didn’t expect: heartbreak is a surprisingly effective appetite suppressant. Nothing kills hunger like a bruised stomach and a skull that won’t stop ringing. I’ve never eaten so little, so willingly, in my life.