I’ve long moved on from my divorce, and my memories of what it felt like to be so full of sorrow, to be brimming to the point that I stole a quick cry every time I bent down to tie my shoe or turned my back to stir my tea at the kitchen counter, are fading.

Before those memories disappear entirely, I want to root for those people one more time, out loud. Brand-new divorcees of the world, I’ve got seven things to say to you:

BE PROUD OF YOURSELF

You’re battling a bogeyman that some people would do anything to get away from, that a lot of miserable people decry with histrionic fervor. Right now, somewhere, a man or woman is tolerating treatment that erodes his or her humanity just to avoid the experience currently hitting you in the face with a sledgehammer.

These people, the ones who still need their lives to be a story that makes sense, say it loudly, so that the monster under the bed will hear: Divorce isn’t an option. Well, you’re making it an option. You’re making it an option like a fucking badass. Maybe you found yourself dumped into an arena against your will, facing that monster gladiator-style while the deadbolt slides into place behind you and you clutch whatever weapon you can find in terror. Or maybe you dragged that fucker out by his ankle and have tackled him out of sheer rage about everything that has happened in the last months or years, everything that made you feel broken, alone, or so bored you could scream. Either way, you are fighting, for yourself and often for your children, and that is hard.

You’re making your world from scratch, and that requires tirelessness and bravery. Be proud of yourself.

DON’T GET NOSTALGIC

I’ve said it before: Two happy people do not wake up one morning, get into a playful fight over the last bagel, and wind up in court. Something got you here, and I’m willing to bet it wasn’t “No, I love YOU more! No, YOU hang up!” Divorce isn’t a masked man who pops up out of the shrubbery and demands that you hand over your happy relationship. Divorce is your relationship, or at least what your relationship has become in this moment. Nothing has been done to either of you that doesn’t happen to couples all over the world. If you want to work it out, work it out — but with honesty and an extremely discriminating eye for eliminating the issues.

And before you moon over those wedding photos, remember that it’s easy to look happy when someone else has done your hair, your new mother-in-law has just given you a really nice rice cookier, and a photographer is waiting in the wings to Photoshop out the zit on your nose. It was easy to look happy when you were still in the youthful business of condensing your happier moments into something everyone could see.

Your life right now is no accident, and you can’t afford to lie to yourself about that. Don’t get nostalgic.

REMEMBER THAT THIS IS YOUR FIRST TIME

Maybe you miss your spouse. Maybe you miss your house or your children. There are a lot of very logical reasons for your distress, for the feeling that you don’t know what to think about or where to put your hands, but remember that unfamiliarity causes a great deal of distress on its own, regardless of context. You’ve never been in pain like this; you have no idea how long it’s going to last; your life experiences thus far have not yielded a map out of this dark maze. Remember your first breakup, how you thought you’d never heal, how you thought you’d ruined everything? Yeah, like that — except this time society agrees with you, because unlike other breakups, this is a breakup we’ve been taught to pretend will never happen, a breakup we aren’t allowed to accept as a standard part of learning and growing.

People have asked me if I’m afraid to get married again out of fear of having to go through divorce all over again someday, but I can’t imagine any divorce being as bad as the one I endured, because at least half of my misery came from the utterly false notion that I had permanently damaged myself and my life, that I was a ruined human being. If I ever get divorced again, I will have an enormous advantage over the last time: Experience will have taught me that I will be just fine.

You are nowhere that you’ve ever been. Remember that this is your first time.

DON’T MAKE ANY BIG, CRAZY DECISIONS

I know you’re going to anyway, but … I just … later you’ll … oh, well. Your hair will grow back, I guess. Just be aware that your opinions will oscillate wildly for the next year, or two. You’ll be so sure of something only to later realize that you were speaking out of pain, or fear, or anger. It’s okay to have those feelings, but try let them marinate for a while before deciding they’re worthy of action. Don’t make any big, crazy decisions.

IT’S OKAY TO BE SOMEONE ELSE NOW

Every day is going to make its mark on you no matter what, unless you’re okay with living a life devoid of personal growth. Every experience changes you — that’s just part of the process of becoming one of those badass senior citizens who fart anytime they want and are willing poke rude people in the sternum on the bus. You’re only stressed about the change now because you think that the new you is the unhappy version, but that’s not forever; grieving always sucks even when it’s time to move on and do just that.

But eventually, you will feel better, and you won’t mind your new perspective so much. In fact, if you’re like many people I know, you’ll struggle a lot less with fear than you have in the past, because you’ve seen firsthand how tough you can be, and you finally trust yourself to handle whatever comes your way.

You will never be the same, but that was never the deal. Every heaven or hell on earth you have ever set foot into has resulted in someone else walking out the other side. It’s okay to be someone else now.

LIFE IS NOT THE SUMMARY OF YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES

Life is not the summary of your circumstances. You can be more. Reach outward, just a little, even if it just means making a point of looking around you. You can be the observer of things that have nothing to do with you. You can be someone else’s good day. I know you don’t have a lot of energy, but even a small gesture, a glance upward, can make you feel better. I developed this practice of reaching outward during my divorce, and I’ve kept it, and it enhances my happiness still. Because I’ve looked around, I know a lot of little things, like the fact that the train I ride to work every day, in my new life, was manufactured when I was five years old.

I like to think of it being made while I went about my business in kindergarten, having no idea that commuter trains existed. I like to think of it shuttling people back and forth long before I got here, its doors opening and closing and people pouring in and out while I grew up and got married and got turned around and suffered the devastating loss of my marriage two thousand miles away. I find it deeply reassuring that reality is defined by so much more than what I feel like today, that it is not my sole responsibility to stand here and make this train real, that it doesn’t have to matter so much how I feel.

Look up. Learn something. Life is not the summary of your circumstances.

YOU REALLY ARE GOING TO BE FINE

You really are going to be fine. Look at the divorced people around you. Are they living in some urine-scented alley somewhere, drinking whiskey for breakfast and spending the rest of the day sitting on the sidewalk with their backs against the wall, staring into the middle distance with bloodshot eyes while they hold up a sign that says WILL WORK FOR LESSONS ON HOW TO CHANGE THE FILTER IN THE FURNACE BECAUSE MY HUSBAND ALWAYS DID IT SO I DIDN’T KNOW HOW AND NOW I’M HOMELESS? If you don’t know any divorced people, consider me your token divorced person; feel free to refer to me that way at parties. I am fine.

I am better than fine, actually. I am healed, and happy, and excited about the future. And I have faith that someday, not so far away as you think, you will be, too.

I don’t know that I’ve ever been as overcome with deja vu as I was when we walked down the jetbridge together, toward our plane. I don’t know how to explain the certainty of that moment, the certainty I have always felt at that moment when we receive our boarding passes and fall into step together, our luggage rolling into alignment behind us to form a rumbling procession, but I will try: it felt less like what we used to do and more like who we had always been. It didn’t feel nostalgic, but it did feel profoundly true. It felt like that little bit of home that you recognize even more readily when you are exploring somewhere else entirely.

This isn’t to say that we don’t experience the occasional culture shock. “I feel like I’m on the wrong side of the bed,” Jeff joked from his side of the room as we were falling asleep; he had always slept on my right, and we had accidentally claimed our beds backward. Likewise, when he is at my elbow, I am embarrassed to admit that I sometimes forget to pay for little things that I’m buying, like my own latte; he was always the one who carried our money.

Mostly, though, we just laugh, because if you don’t insist on getting all schmaltzy about it, it really is sort of funny, the way everything is the same and yet not at all the same, in this foreign country we find ourselves navigating.

Here is the thing I feel strange admitting in a culture hellbent on convincing everyone that divorce is some kind of cultural poison: I love having an ex-husband. It’s a shame I don’t have several more of them, really, in case the first one is too busy to go out to dinner or one of them gets hit by a bus or something, or maybe we just decide we want to play a more complex round of Monopoly than two people can allow for.

(Though, I suppose if I had several, I would have to change my plans to get a “#1 Ex-Husband” mug made for Jeff for his birthday, which would be a shame, because I think he’s going to get a kick out of it.)

Sometimes I don’t see him for months, but when I do, he always knows what sorts of restaurants I will like and which movies I’ll want to see. Awhile ago, we stood out in the cold so he could teach me to change my car headlight, and I met him at the coffee shop a few weeks ago to help him write a letter. He kept borrowing my snowboard, so eventually I just gave it to him; we’ve passed our DLP projector back and forth a few times now, depending on which of us is less busy and more in the mood to watch movies. I’ve told him he can have my car when I get around to getting another one (he still has the keys, and has been known to re-park it in the event that he sees a space closer to my door, which is nice except when it makes me feel as if I am going senile), and if/when I sell my book, some of that money (all four dollars of it) will be his, for supporting me as avidly as he did, both emotionally and financially, while I wrote most of it.

I married very well, it turns out. I am even more sure of that now that it’s over.

People tell me that what we claim to be doing is impossible–that we either did not have big enough problems from the outset or that we have not yet moved on romantically. “Oh, just wait until one of you remarries,” they say, because God forbid we all avoid getting ahead of ourselves and just enjoy some good news for once. (He has a girlfriendish who has far more claim to him than I do at this point, and I would totally go to his next wedding, if he would have me. My love life is even more complicated; frankly, Jeff is the simplest and most platonic thing in it.) There must be some reason, they contend, that we have been spared from animosity or estrangement, and obviously it is through no effort of our own. They list all the reasons that most people could not do what we have done, and they question whether our divorce was even necessary in the first place, forcing me to either explain to them in detail all of the awful things that Jeff and I have done to each other or endure the destruction of my credibility.

And you know what? I think people need to stop it, for their own sake. I think they need to stop assuming that it isn’t possible and start finding ways to make it possible, because not only is divorce not going away, but divorce is not even the problem, or at least it doesn’t necessarily have to be. I am not the only one in the history of divorce to feel that way–nor are such positive outcomes reserved for the childless. Jeff’s parents, for instance, used to move in and out of the family home every six months so that their children wouldn’t have to, and they remain friendly to this day. I grew up living up the street from duplex families who had mommies on the first floor and daddies on the second floor.

Can it always be done? Of course not; it takes two (and sometimes more than two, if new girlfriends and boyfriends and wives and husbands are involved). But I do think that, as a society, we need to learn to divorce better, because staying married is sort of like staying abstinent: the best solution is not the best solution at all if it routinely fails to happen, so perhaps we should stop acting as if life has to be so goddamned ideal all the time and start working with what we have.

Should you ever find yourself ending your marriage, I encourage you to draw solace from the manner in which various people console you. Many married people reacted to my situation with horror; what was happening to me was their worst-case scenario, romantically speaking–their monster under the bed. The smartest and coolest divorced people I know, on the other hand, were both more sympathetic and much less alarmed on my behalf. They didn’t say it, because they didn’t want to patronize me or minimize my pain, but if I had paid attention, I would have seen that, deep down, they never had any doubt that I would be fine, if I wanted to be.

Who are you going to listen to: the well-intentioned but inexperienced people who have never been through it and are nearly panicking on your behalf regarding everything miserable you will surely be required to endure, according to their imagined version of how awful divorce must be, or the people who have been there–the ones who reassure you calmly, discuss the situation without theatrics, and treat your eventual healing as a foregone conclusion, as if you are merely suffering one really epic zinger of a scraped knee?

If you have decided to listen to the latter, and you need to hear it one more time, I am ready to pass along that message, because it’s true: divorce happens, and it can’t erase you, and you will be fine, if you want to be.

This whole thing, this entire trip, has been so us. This is us, this exchange of gleeful expressions while we strap ourselves in. This is us, this passing back and forth across the aisle of headphones, powerbars, sweatshirts, and everything else we share as communal property in an unconscious habit ten years in the making. This is us, this tandem head-scratching over coins and rail passes and signs lettered in a foreign language. We stop, we lean in, we contemplate, we figure it out, and we keep going.

“You Are Here,” the maps tell us, and it’s true: we still are.

When my ex-husband, Jeff, and I moved to St. Louis, he knew I was unhappy with the decor of our house, but money, of course, did not grow on trees. Except that year, it did, because he cashed in some investments and spent hours twist-tying money to a festive little potted tree. Then he gave it to me for Christmas and told me to make the house we lived in ours. He wanted me to have everything; it was almost an obsession. There wasn’t one minute of the years and years we spent together that he wasn’t striving to put the world on a string and loop it around my little finger. I learned to avoid wishing aloud, lest the poor man collapse in exhaustion from his determination to fulfill whatever request I had just absentmindedly uttered.

Case in point: he once rethrew an entire birthday party for my father because I had accidentally deleted pictures of my father and his birthday cake, then wept to the point of hiccups, like a small child, because I had so few good pictures of my dad (and also I was possibly hormonal as all hell). At any rate: Jeff duplicated the entire thing, right down to the cake and the mylar balloons. He invited everyone, and believe it or not, they came. Again. He warned me beforehand because he knows that even wonderful surprises tend to fluster me beyond repair. One of the pictures I took that day is my favorite picture of my parents; it sits above their fireplace.

Every night he was home, as he was falling asleep, he would ask if the rabbits could come sleep with us. They couldn’t, of course, but he was always trying to talk me into it. “Just for a minute,” he would plead, his eyes already closed, smiling into his pillow. He called Maisie, a fat, grumpy little rabbit who kind of hated us, his little princess; he would rabidly defend her when I implied she could stand to lose weight (though he would, when pressed, grudgingly admit that she was “curvy” or “a little portly”). Before he left town, he would put on his hat and coat and then tell Hugh the Rabbit to take care of the house while he was gone. He snuck extra treats to both of them when I wasn’t looking; I feigned exasperation, but the truth is that the sight of him trying to conspire with them always made me laugh.

He made me breakfast. He put gas in the car. He always left my train tickets under my keys. He did damn near every dish I made for seven years. He automatically bought tickets to any concert he knew I would be interested in going to, then stuck them to the fridge. He never forgot an anniversary of anything, even the more obscure ones. He supported me financially without resentment, without even really thinking about it. He told me that he knew I was a good writer, because he wasn’t a reader but he loved everything I ever wrote. He called me “J.H.,” a play off J.K. Rowling’s name.

When we were splitting up our stuff, we had enough wedding pictures for both of us, thanks to duplicate sets. At one point, while we were arranging the pictures in little piles, we both started laughing. Because isn’t this crazy? Isn’t this flat-out RIDICULOUS? And yet my relationship with this man, he of the clean dishes and the endless encouragement, had become damaged beyond repair. Can you believe that? I couldn’t either; some people still can’t.

I don’t blame them, but I know what I know—even if, for a little while there, it was impossible to believe. It’s over. And the minute those two brutal words sink in, you can move on to … well, an even worse stage! Yay!

THE BLACK HOLE SUN STAGE

Everything stood still, Hiroshima style. Batteries went dead; unanswered texts and e-mails piled up like dead leaves on the doorstep of an abandoned house. There had been a Before, and as inconceivable as it might have seemed at the time, there would be an After, too. But this was the in-between. This was the space where nothing existed but a blank and oddly numb sort of pain. Even the sorrow was static; it didn’t budge or flow, but calcified in my chest and limbs, weighing me down and keeping me still. I didn’t know anything; I didn’t want anything. I was inanimate, a sunken stone.

Everything in the refrigerator stayed where it was (but not AS it was, unfortunately for my gag reflex about three weeks later). Scooted-out chairs collected dust while silently emphasizing spaces now pointedly unoccupied. Mail kept arriving, addressed to an entity that no longer existed. This was odd; hadn’t they heard? Hadn’t the entire world heard? It had been deafening, which made the ensuing quiet all the more unnerving.

THE GROUNDHOG STAGE

But, as it turned out, people had no idea. When I finally crawled out of my hole and looked around a bit, I discovered that the sun was still doing its thing, along with everyone else. They would smile at me, ask how I was, ask how Jeff was. Did we have any travel plans coming up?

This was unfathomable. I felt sodden with what had happened, like I’d been physically dunked in it, like I squished when I walked. I still wore makeup and sported shiny hair, of course, but so do dead people; it’s just protocol. But as I put one foot in front of the other on the sidewalk, buses passed by me and stirred the air, just like always.

It appeared the buses were still running, then. Huh.

THE CRAZY PENDULUM STAGE

Negotiations and random tasks had worn me down to my last nerve, which, in its unprotected state, seemed to resonate wildly with whatever was going on at the time. A stranger just smiled at me for no reason? HUMANITY IS SO BREATHTAKINGLY AND TOUCHINGLY BEAUTIFUL! It started to rain? THE UNIVERSE SEIZES ITS EVERY OPPORTUNITY TO SHIT ON ME JUST FOR THE PLEASURE OF WATCHING ME SUFFER!

I had discovered the outside world still existed, but I had no idea where I belonged in it. And since everything in my zinging and abrasive Technicolor hyper-existence was marked extremely urgent, I felt a great deal of pressure to figure this out immediately—even if I had yet to regain the rationality required to do so. At one point, and I am not even kidding you, I thought I might get a motorcycle and become a forest ranger. Even though I am famously risk-averse (not to mention uncoordinated) and I loathe the outdoors.

This stage is likely to drive your poor friends crazy. One day, you’re explaining to them quite earnestly why you have nothing to look forward to and your life is over. The next day, you’re exuberant about your new chosen career of astronaut. “The FINAL frontier,” you will say to them, jabbing your finger toward the sky. (If you have very good friends, they won’t remind you that you passed the maximum age for military aviators three years ago and that you failed basic algebra. Twice.) The day after that: black despair. The day after that: a sudden and very enthusiastic obsession with the art of marionette puppetmastering, or God only knows what. Et cetera, et cetera.

This might go on for an embarrassingly long time. But it won’t be forever, so don’t bother wasting several hours a day wondering if you’re just going to be crazy like this from now on. I know I spent way too much time musing dejectedly that I had once been so SANE and trying to come up with scientific explanations for how mundane divorce tasks like the splitting of a cell phone plan could somehow be linked to actual brain damage.

THE HEALING STAGE

For me, this overlapped with the crazy pendulum stage, but it may not for everyone. In between fits of complete crazy-pendulum insanity (the darkest of which, for some reason, seemed to happen at the supermarket, which seems weird, but others have described similar incidents occurring at Target), I was rebuilding. Some of this was conscious—there is a REASON my apartment is decorated to the nines—and some of it was unconscious.

I read a lot of poetry. I read about science. I read about human achievements and human disasters. I read articles on crazy inexplicable particle behavior (quantum entanglement ftw!), on the development of human flight, on Chernobyl, on World War II. I related, I identified, I processed. I read about Jews crucified because they were blamed for the plague. I read about the turn of the earth and the replication of DNA. I read about despair and discovery in equal amounts. I completed a giant volume of world history and a giant volume of scientific history; I forgot most of it, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that sense of an expanding world, that instinctive seeking out of anything and everything I had not known as my old self.

There was something healing about awe. I turned pages in order to invoke that therapeutic awe in myself, the way someone will run miles to achieve a runner’s high. There was so much out there; the world was so massive in its ideas and nooks and customs and memories. After thinking so intensely and involuntarily of myself, of ME ME ME, it felt so good to stretch, to reach … and to realize that there is so much more to everything than who I am or how I have failed. And to realize that so many possibilities still remain.

As I picked up speed and regained the energy I had been devoting to my own personal tragedy, it started to feel as if my neurons were at a goddamn RAVE or something. Had I been hesitant to walk out into this crazy, amazing, messed-up world before? Had I been afraid to get my hands dirty, to touch and be touched?

If I had been hesitant before, now I couldn’t wait.

THE SUPERHERO STAGE

The superhero stage is my favorite divorce stage so far. (Perhaps more accurately, Kerri calls it the superherOINE stage.) I’m honestly not sure I have ever felt this powerful in my life. I think I could whip my index fingers out of imaginary holsters slung across my hips and shoot you dead with them. (Not that I would do that! You seem nice!) I am genuinely surprised at the lack of booming KAPOW! noise every time I flex my thumb in this scenario.

I belong to myself. I can do whatever I want. I can go wherever I want. I don’t have to take shit from anyone. “Compromise” is not a necessary component of my vocabulary. It sounds selfish, but it isn’t, necessarily; I’ve actually been doing more volunteering than ever before, because I can—because every hour of every day is mine to spend as I like.

I became convinced that I could do good for myself by doing good for others. My resume lacks diversity, so I called a children’s organization and told them I wanted to do their marketing and write their grants, as long as they were willing to teach me. As an unexpected perk, I now have access to a fantastic workspace. I have been frustrated by my inability to build things and fix things on my own; I signed up for Habitat for Humanity with the idea that I might learn a thing or two, only to discover that they had partnered with the community college to offer free classes on everything from reading blueprints to installing flooring.

I can tell you exactly when my superhero phase started. I was reading my bajillionth book on my Kindle when I suddenly thought, I wish I had my typewriter. For months I hadn’t been able to string a sentence together; I had stared at my manuscript, confounded at the idea that I had managed to produce ANY of this, much less that I would ever feel moved to revise it. For months I had felt inert, dependent on the words of others to pull me along. Suddenly, I wanted those keys under my hands again. Hell, I wanted to BLOG again, something I hadn’t thought about in so long that I had forgotten how to use Wordpress. I wanted to tell you about all of this, share all of it with you, breathlessly, at a rate you can barely keep up with, like Amelie dragging a blind man by the hand.

Not that you’re blind, of course, but you were unaware of what was going on with me. Which is pretty much the same thing, seeing as I am the center of the universe.

You would not believe how quickly these posts pour out; I have never written faster, and I was not a slow writer to begin with. I am inspired. I am the patron saint of divorce redemption. I am a phoenix. I am made of magic. I will change your life. I will change my life. I could strangle Chuck Norris with my bare hands. I won’t, because he has done nothing to deserve it, but I am just saying. Flowers pop up in my fucking FOOTPRINTS right now, all right?

I’m sure it won’t last. I’m sure there will be setbacks; that’s okay. But I intend to enjoy it while it lasts.

I had lunch with Jeff recently and talked a blue streak at the poor man, my soup untouched while I explained that I loved my job and I was going to build HOUSES and help the CHILDREN and have an amazing RESUME. Our past get-togethers have gone well enough, but he could tell there was something different about me this time; he kept having to pull on one of my arms in order to keep me from floating up into the sky, for instance.

“Are you happier now?” he asked. He wasn’t being maudlin; he just honestly wanted to know.

That question gave me pause like none other. My God, AM I happier now? The idea had enormous implications for both of us. But when I stopped to think about it, I knew it wasn’t true.

“No,” I finally said, after setting a Guinness World Record for bread-chewing. “I’m not happier than I was back then. I’m just finally ME again, and I’m so excited about it that I’m kicking some extra ass.”

And that’s why I wrote this post: because I have gotten so many heartbreaking e-mails since I wrote that list of divorce advice. I really didn’t expect that, considering that I’ve been blogging for about four minutes, but people like Loralee and Moosh and Avitable have been kind enough to spread the word. The response has been … humbling, and sad, because so many people separated yesterday, or the day before, or last week, and holy crap life is so wrenchingly hard sometimes.

I wrote this post because I want to tell all of those people that they will come back, and it will be amazing, and I am so excited for them. When they get there, I hope they let me know, because it will make my day. I’m thinking of all of you, future superheroes. Hang in there.

2. She has no game whatsoever. This girl not only fails to remember to wear hot underwear, but she will also strike up a conversation while perched on your toilet (just to PEE, of course—she’s still a lady). She may also discuss her cycles with you, regardless of whether you happen to be trying to eat lunch at the time. Come to think of it, this girl is not really for the faint of heart.

3. She doesn’t want to get married. She doesn’t want to get married. She doesn’t want to get married. Do you hear her? Because she doesn’t. And if you want to, like ever, like even when everyone involved is ninety-eight years old and a marriage would be really beneficial purely for estate distribution purposes, you can just move along, buddy. You may think you don’t want to get married. But deep down, you might. You might. Don’t you go getting all mushy in the eyes, because she’s watching you as one watches that possibly zombie-bitten, expendable character in the mall, waiting for you to turn.

4. Every story she tells involves this one guy who occupies her every mental diorama in a neutral but persistent manner. It’s like that game where you add “in bed” to everything, except you add “with my ex” to everything. “This one time, in Iceland (with my ex) …” “So I was at Baskin Robbins (with my ex) …” “And anyway, so there I was, wearing my wedding dress and standing in front of a pastor, ready to exchange eternal, lifelong vows (with my ex) …” Sorry. It’s not intentional. You’ll probably have to get used to it. If it helps, pretend that [FILL IN EX'S NAME HERE] was a … I don’t know, a golden retriever or something. Doesn’t that make it more fun? “This one time, I was at a bar, making out (with a golden retriever) …” Okay, so it doesn’t work in every context. Or maybe it does, depending on the bar.

5. She loves her cat. Listen, that cat may be a dumb little critter incapable of actual emotion, but that cat was THERE for her. Don’t judge. Bonus points if you feign affection for the cat even when the cat is clearly resentful of your very existence. Oh, man, the divorced ladies love their cats. If you have any idea what you’re messing with, and if you value this relationship at all, you’re a cat person now. Aren’t you. AREN’T YOU. Are you sure? Because if not, she could just shut the cat in the bathroom so he doesn’t bother you … No? Good answer. Goooood answer. Now lie still … very still … shhhhh. The cat doesn’t like it when you interrupt the nap he’s taking on your face.

(She loves her rabbit, too, but he is not the resentful type and he does not nap on faces, so it’s not really an issue.)

6. Did she mention she doesn’t want to get married? She is just checking.

7. She hesitates to admit to you. The next time she and you run into someone out in public that she knows, could you crawl under the dinner table a little faster? And next time make sure the toe of your shoe isn’t sticking out under the edge of the tablecloth, will you? Otherwise, people will think you’re her boyfriend, and then they will ask questions, and honestly, she can barely ask herself those questions right now, much less field them from someone else. How are you at imitating a potted plant when cornered? Fantastic!

8. She’s … a little oversensitive to domestic conflict, and possibly somewhat paranoid. Did you just look at the wet towel she left on the floor in a disparaging manner? Did your nostrils flutter slightly with disdain? What do you mean, you don’t know what she’s talking about? Your eyes definitely shifted toward it a little. More like a twitch, really. Your eyes TWITCHED toward it. And your nostrils, they flared … or at least they opened slightly, oh so very slightly, just one tiny and almost undetectable step in a time-lapse photo collection of a flower blooming. And she saw. SHE SAW.

9. She is highly averse to planning for the future. What do you mean, what does she want for lunch? Are the two of you even going to be dating by lunch? It’s only ten-thirty. You want her to be your date to a wedding in two months? Oh, that’s precious. She could be eating monkey brains out of a bowl in some third-world country in two months for all she knows. Life is unpredictable! You never know! Just trust her on this one!

10. Her expectations can be a little … unreasonable. What, you didn’t know that you’re supposed to bring her a fork with her grilled cheese? You didn’t even MAKE her a grilled cheese? You keep forgetting that she doesn’t watch television? You don’t stick her keys in the fridge next to her lunch so she doesn’t forget her food in the morning? You didn’t realize she can’t sleep under a mere SHEET like some kind of … an animal … in the woods … who has found a sheet and is sleeping under it? You didn’t realize that she vastly prefers Cherry Coke to plain old Coke? Good grief, you are TERRIBLE at this game. What’s your name again? Actually, scratch the “again,” just … what’s your name in the first place? Nevermind–the two of you can talk about this later, once you’ve run to the store for tampons.

I think you will agree that there is never a better time to make such a decision than when you are romantically heartbroken, with an utterly uncertain future and nowhere to live. This is truly the ideal time for a visit the Humane Society; it says so right in their pamphlet. When Jeff and I were negotiating everything, I actually ASKED, as in, on my LIST OF DEMANDS, if I could get a cat, because having a cat to snuggle with would make me “feel better about this whole divorce thing,” especially since I was leaving the bunnies behind for the foreseeable future. No red flags there! Carry on!

Technically, I did have somewhere to live; it just didn’t have anything in it yet, seeing as I had just received the keys from my landlord about two hours prior. Jeff by no means had pressured me to leave, especially considering that he was never home anyway, but at some point in the proceedings, I had locked onto the idea that I would find a sunny studio somewhere with hardwood floors. You know the kind–with crown molding and crystal doorknobs and darling little keyholes. I had always wanted to live somewhere like that, with a cat.

And guess what? I totally made it happen! I’m … just not sure it turned out to be the hottest idea to fulfill both aspects of that fantasy in the same day.

I walked into the Humane Society, completely dazed. You know that beginning to a movie, the one where some disheveled girl who’s been through some as-yet-unrevealed zombie-invasion hell wanders into a charming little gas station with the tinkling of a doorbell, and you can tell she’s not quite right? That something has clearly Happened, even before the cute gum-cracking cashier with the Southern accent recognizes the severity of the situation? I think that was probably me. I was all, “I am here to get a cat,” as if this was the only English sentence I knew. (Come to think of it, there’s another dead giveaway that you’re about to watch an unpleasant killer-cyborg type of plot unfold: a stranger who quite suspiciously appears to be programmed to just say a few key sentences over and over again while trying to act normal.)

In my defense, I am famous (some would say notorious) for spoiling my pets, and I don’t think any of the friends who were too polite to argue with me at the time really expected me to do any harm to some poor homeless animal by, like, squeezing it too hard while staring blankly into the distance, JUST AS AN EXAMPLE, HA HA HA HA. Also in my defense, I HAD asked a Humane Society employee, over the phone, whether I was required to take the cat home that same day. I was reassured that this was not the case.

I was given a number and directed to the cat area. I studied each animal in turn, looking for signs of hardiness. After all, this poor feline would be expected to serve as the sole emotional outlet for a woman who was still crying at stoplights, so “rugged” seemed like a fairly key adjective. Not to hate on the available cats of the Humane Society, but frankly, none of them seemed like sidekick material. Most of them were sleeping, for instance; I think you will agree that this was not exemplary of the kind of roll-up-your-sleeves gusto required of a divorce sidekick.

Crushing disappointment had already set in by the time I turned around and saw him. He was the only cat I hadn’t seen yet, and you guys, he was PERFECT:

This gigantic cuddly tabby won me over in about a second. He was strong; he was handsome; he had personality. People, he was cat-boyfriend material—we’re talking the kind of cat-boyfriend who will don a varsity letter sweater in order to put a corsage on your wrist and take you to the dance. There was alert gazing! There was purring! There was the kneading of my sweater! I immediately had the most mature and well-adjusted reaction possible, which was to plonk down in a chair right in front of his cage and glare at everyone while clutching my paper number in one hand and petting him through the bars with the other. “You really … like that one, don’t you?” people would ask politely. And I was all, “What was your first clue? MOVE ALONG, PLEASE.”

By the time my number came up and I jabbed my finger in his direction rapidly and repeatedly, like, THAT ONE, I WANT THAT ONE, AND YOU BETTER GO GET HIM FOR ME NOW, RIGHT NOW, BEFORE SOMEONE TAKES HIM AWAY, the getting-to-know-you process was really more of a formality. They handed him to me, he head-butted me hello and then commenced kneading my shoulder with his paws, and I said, “I’ll be back for him on Wednesday.”

“Oh, no, I’m sorry,” the attendant responded. “We don’t allow anyone to reserve an animal.”

Alarmed, I explained that I had called and asked beforehand. She repeated their policy and politely explained that whoever I had talked to obviously had their head up their ass (though not in so many words). After a moment of back-and-forth, it became obvious that I had to decide whether I could live with the possibility that he might be gone when I came back in a few days. And really, since I was quite objectively aware that he was the most perfect and wonderful cat that had ever existed on this earth, that outcome seemed like a strong possibility.

“Well … I … guess I’ll take him now!” I said brightly, as if I had so much as a piece of furniture back home. Or, you know, a litterbox, even. About three seconds later, they took my picture, standing there, holding him. I don’t know how it turned out, but I’m sure I looked terrified. Very newly single girl clutches the cat that she is utterly unprepared to take home and stares into the lens with a tremulous smile: yet another successful adoption story in which a cat finds its forever family!

Lest you think I’m exaggerating my state of mind, I give you this: once they put him in a box and handed him to me, I just walked right out the door with him, without paying a dime. You guys, I actually STOLE a CAT. (Please join me in my childish delight when I observe that one might call this … catnapping.)

I walked out to the parking lot, put him in the front seat, and sat behind the wheel without moving for a good seven minutes. Then I drove to PetSmart. You haven’t lived until you’re dragging a box with a cat in it around the pet store, flinging litter liners and cat food and cat toys and cat litter into an overflowing cart. At some point, I realized I had not adopted the cat in question, but stolen one, but by then it was way too late to go back. Who knew when this thing was going to poop? I WAS IN A DESPERATE RACE AGAINST THE POOP.

Inconveniently (and rather cinematically, if I do say so myself), it began to pour down rain, which is how I found myself soaking wet in front of my building with two armloads of cat accoutrements and a meowing cardboard box. I learned a lot that day: mainly, to never, ever buy the forty-pound tub of litter, as someone who lives in a third-floor walkup. I walked into my utterly empty (and by utterly empty, I mean devoid of so much as a roll of toilet paper) apartment, threw everything down, let my new and horrified cat-boyfriend out of the box, and started apologizing profusely.

Did I mention I was going out of town that weekend, and was in fact already late?

I poured him like nine bowls of cat food to tide him over for the next two days and got ready to leave; he kept cowering and trying to climb into my lap. Finally, I just called my parents, told them I was going to be late getting home, and sat against the wall, on the floor, with him curled up in a lap that was too small for him. We sat like that for a long time, both new here, both thoroughly freaked out. In a flash of inspiration, after taking in my empty surroundings, I named him Finito Garante, which is really terrible Italian for “guaranteed to be over.” (Jeff, may I remind you, is severely allergic to cats.) The whole day just had that feel: There’s no going back now, is there. “I’ll call you Nito!” I told my cat-boyfriend. Then I headed to my hometown to see my family for the first time since the Decision had been made, in order to reassure them that I was all right.

When I returned home about forty-eight hours later, I had about nine messages from the Humane Society telling me I had stolen a cat and—I am not making this up—THREATENING TO SEND AN OFFICER TO THE PREMISES if I did not contact them immediately and turn myself in. And I was all, listen, if you took your job that seriously, you wouldn’t have given someone like me a cat in the first place.

But that cat has slept in the crook of my arm ever since then, so I’m glad they did.

He can, at times, be convinced to sleep away from me, on his side of the bed, like so:

Good night, Nito.

Yet … somehow … in the morning, when I wake up, it’s more like this:

Oh, good MORNING, Nito. I don’t even know how we wind up like that without me waking up.

He also loves to help me work. Sometimes, he can be cajoled into a reasonable helping position, from which he can review manuscripts and offer creative input. (Well, when he actually has his eyes open … which is never.)

Most of the time, though, he is … rather unhelpful.

No, Nito, that’s perfect. You’re not in the way at all.

Usually I just give up and work around him, which is why my workspace looks like this a lot of the time:

Not that he’s, uh, a spoiled little cat-prince or anything.

It’s ridiculous, how much having him has helped me. I would slog through a confusing day of realtors and insurance papers and God knows what else, and then I would crawl into bed and hug on his big furry self like a little kid lost in the woods with a teddy bear. And he would start purring immediately, and his tail would start patting me in a slow, sleepy rhythm, and we would fall asleep like that, content if not always particularly victorious. Even now, he greets me when I come home every day, and there is something profoundly healing about that, even if he is just a grubby little parasite when you get right down to it. Hey, who isn’t?

Anyway, it’s a good thing I don’t send out Christmas cards, or I would have some choice words for you: Nito, me, Olan Mills, matching sweater vests. Don’t act like that wouldn’t be awesome.

Don’t marry anyone you wouldn’t feel comfortable divorcing. If the love of your life plays the victim, if they hate all of their exes, if they say nasty things about people they used to date, there is a very good chance that person will do the same to you someday, should you find yourselves on the wrong side of some very alarming statistics. As you walk down the aisle, if you can’t count on a romantic future together, you can at least count on a romantic future that doesn’t involve property damage, the spiteful withholding of pets and/or children, and restraining orders filed on behalf of the overdramatic.

Plus, anytime anyone asks about your ex and how it’s going, you can say, “Oh, he/she is great. A++++++++, would divorce again.” Oh, come on, that’s funny.

Because it’s like eBay? Get it? Nevermind.

FOR THE HAPPILY MARRIED

Have your own friends. Have your own bank account. Have your own life. Investing in your marriage does not mean you can’t continue to invest in yourself as well. The people in your own individual social circle, the ones who belong to you as an individual, may very well wind up carrying your couch up three flights of stairs. Couches are heavy, man. Make some friends.

Don’t ditch your family just because you’re working on your own family now. If things don’t work out, your family will assemble a mean kitchen island for you, and your dad will hang your shelves. (If you did ignore them, say you’re sorry and that you’re so thankful they’re here. If you do it sincerely enough, they might buy you something. I’m just saying.)

FOR THE UNHAPPILY MARRIED

Do what you can to fix it, obviously. Obviously.

FYI: Your horror at the idea of “becoming a statistic” reveals your perception that you are somehow better than everyone else—that you assumed yourself immune to the sorts of problems that have plagued half the married population. Your desire to not become THAT PERSON, the person who gets divorced, is revealing an elitism in you that you still don’t see, not yet.

Guess what? Turns out that you are not that special, and neither was your relationship, no matter how much you enjoyed conceptualizing it as a fairy tale (I’m looking at you, psychobrides). Mmmm, humble pie! It’s delicious! When you’re done chewing, decide what you would do if everyone you knew died of the swine flu tomorrow and thus there was no one around to see what happened next. Then do that.

FOR THE DIVORCING

It’s no one’s business; feel free to tell them so. This doesn’t make you rude; they were rude to ask. Well, unless “So, are you guys still sleeping together?” doesn’t count as a rude question in your book even when it comes from your smarmy boss—in which case, I have some likeminded people I’d like to introduce you to. Maybe they’ll start conversing with you instead of me.

Cheesy music can really cheer you up. The cheesier, the better, really. Let Destiny’s Child offer you a strong moral message while also providing a beat to dance to in your new apartment. Note that your pets will not, in fact, throw their hands up at you, even if you entreat them to do so. Technically, they are not independent women, so I suppose this makes sense.

Try to let people help you, if they’re able. You have your pride, yes, but you are only one person, and there is a lot to do. Don’t worry—divorce is really common. Surely you’ll have your chance to pay it back in some way, for someone, later on down the road.

You have to do what’s best for you, as an individual. Nothing I’m about to say trumps that. Don’t lose sight of what you need. Don’t compromise your future out of guilt or a sense of obligation. Your greatest responsibility is to yourself (along with any children you might have). The ability to look out for yourself is not something admirable or special. It is your basic duty and yours alone. There is a difference between caring and vulnerability. Focus on the former.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re weak if you still love your ex. Hate is weak—and, paradoxically, hate is also exhausting and consuming. If you choose to do it this way, if you choose to love, be aware that some activities, like yelling your heart out to fuck-you anthems on the radio, will lose their fun. But the ability to give your ex a heartfelt hug the next time you see them will be worth it. No one is suggesting that the two of you become golf partners, but any civility you can manage is only going to help you in the future.

Don’t let anyone shame you for maintaining a friendship with your ex. If people handled rejection better and learned to stop butthurt in its tracks before they slashed anyone’s tires, maybe they would grasp that it’s a little absurd to become mortal enemies with someone you once called your best friend. This is your life; this person was once your most important thing; the two of you are adults and may do as you please. Don’t follow social protocol just because the inability to fit the two of you into a box makes everyone else uncomfortable. They’ll get over it. Upon saying hello to the two of you at a party, they’ll also get a sort of deer-in-the-headlights look as they mentally review how the extent to which they trashed your ex to everyone you know. It’s probably a little wrong to visibly savor this, so at least try to feign ignorance.

If you left them, have some patience. That probably hurt. A lot. No one in that kind of pain can be expected to behave well all the time. Maintain your boundaries, but do it as gently as you’re able.

If they left you, think about whether you really would have wanted them to continue the relationship out of guilt or obligation. Contemplate the far-out notion that they are rejecting what happens when the two of you combine your strengths and weaknesses, not rejecting you in your entirety as a human being. Blasphemy, I know.

It takes two, of course. Be the bigger person, but grasp that you can’t keep this situation friendly by yourself. Practice due diligence, turn the other cheek, and then drag the asshole to court if that’s what you have to do. (I hope for your sake that it isn’t; I have worked at a law firm, and I can tell you with certainty that no one will win.) If your ex is hateful toward you, do your best not to escalate the situation. You would be surprised how often, if you offer the benefit of the doubt, the other person will say, “I’m sorry. I’m just feeling hurt and upset right now, and I’m not thinking clearly.” If they don’t, perhaps you failed to follow the first piece of advice in this post. Ah well. Just do what you can.

No matter how you play it, the two of you will have bad days. You had bad days when you were together, too. It happens.

Even if you wish no further contact with your ex, treating them maliciously is a waste of everyone’s time. You won’t feel better, and they won’t miraculously develop an appreciation for your side of the story. That whole maxim about the flies and the honey? Remember it. Even if you’re motivated entirely by your own self-interests, cruelty is a poor choice; it’s honestly just lousy strategy.

Don’t let anyone reduce your marriage to a mistake. People want it to have been a mistake because they have determined their own current marriages to be not-mistakes. The concept of a marriage that was doomed from the start is designed to protect them, not you; in precious few cases is it really that simple. Tell anyone who tries to wave off an entire era of your life with one dismissive gesture that you wouldn’t change a thing. It might help to point out that you used to ride around in first-class suites to places like Bangkok and New Zealand (and, in fact, thanks to a generous ex, still CAN ride around in first-class suites to places like Bangkok and New Zealand). If such privileges were not in your marriage arsenal, I assume you’ll come up with something.

If you can’t say that you wouldn’t change a thing because it’s not really true, try to get to a point where you realize that it actually is true. The past few months or years are a part of who you are. Surely you learned SOMETHING, accomplished SOMETHING, experienced SOMETHING worthwhile during that time. Don’t wish yourself away.

You could always just not say anything, of course. Don’t feel pressured to defend yourself or your marriage. People can think what they want; what you think is more important. If you have a little time, though, it would be nice if you could share some insights, if only for the benefit of the next divorcing person to come along.

Resist the temptation to reduce your own marriage to a mistake. Hindsight is not, in fact, 20/20, and I can cite research to prove it. Your demise as a couple will seem so obvious in retrospect; recognize that this is false, a cognitive trick designed to protect your ego. Celebrate what was good. Don’t cling to it, but celebrate it. Perfection is not a prerequisite for something to be real and true in its own way. Nor is longevity.

While you’re celebrating all that good, don’t forget that it ended for a reason. This stuff generally doesn’t happen on its own. People don’t get into a fight over something inconsequential, like who ate the last bagel, get carried away, and oops, they’re divorced. Rejoice the good parts all you want, but don’t forget why you’re where you are. I mean, you’re going to feel like a total jackass if you have to divorce the same person twice.

Recognize that appreciating the good will make the whole deal a little sadder. Tossing aside your emotional armor can be painful, but some wounds need to hurt longer to heal well. If you wait a little longer to climb back onto your feet, it may save you years of limping around. Hot damn, that’s profound. Write that shit down.

Feel free to claim that you were a victim from the first date onward, as long as you don’t mind having this exact same relationship over again with someone else. If you’re looking for something a little different though, if only for the sake of variety, it might be best to acknowledge your role as a willing participant in the partnership. If you married your father/mother and your father/mother sucked, or if the two of you exhibited codependent behaviors of any kind, now would be a fantastic time to look into that.

Say you’re sorry. Ask to be forgiven. Forgive the other person if you can. Forgive yourself while you’re at it.

You will feel better sooner than you think. I promise.

FOR PEOPLE WHO KNOW A DIVORCING PERSON

Say it with me: “I will not assume.”

Don’t take anything personally, even if “anything” includes nine unanswered e-mails and the forgetting of your birthday. Sorry.

Be supportive. Let them decide whether they want to talk about it. Forgive wild fluctuations in emotion and opinion. One day your divorcing friend will want to be a forest ranger! The next day, a nun! One day, your divorcing friend is totally fine, and over the whole thing! The next day, whoops, still depressed. Nod, smile, and be patient. Let them work it out.

This will probably take longer than you think it should. Don’t make a sad person feel guilty or self-indulgent for being sad after whichever calendar date you have deemed appropriate. Otherwise, remorse will bite you in the ass when it’s your turn. Lo, trust this blogger regarding that of which she speaks, for she has learned the hard way.

FOR COMPLETE STRANGERS WHO MAY BE UNFORTUNATE ENOUGH TO ENCOUNTER A DIVORCING PERSON

Sometimes people kick things in public while cursing under their breath. Try not to judge them.

FOR THE HAPPILY DIVORCED

First of all, congratulations. That certainly wasn’t easy, was it?

Invest in yourself. Think. Read. Learn. You stand at a joint in your trajectory; flex it, experiment. Take advantage; you have little to lose. If you need a little courage or inspiration, read this book. Get excited; you now have the keys to an entire realm of possibility. Who are you? Who do you want to be?

If you want to meet somebody, be somebody worth meeting. Burn that wick at both ends by following your own interests and doing something with yourself: not only will you meet people who share your common traits, but you will also care less about whether you meet someone in the first place … seeing as how you went out and got yourself a fulfilling life and all.

There’s a reason you find a relationship the moment you stop looking for one; being okay on your own is the best way to attract healthy people.

Feel free to have a whore phase. I salute you! Please use a condom, though. You aren’t in Kansas anymore, and some of the flying monkeys, while in possession of an enviable level of energy, flexibility, and skill, also have herpes. Other than that, knock yourself out. You’ll probably learn something, and if you don’t, I assure you that once or twice, something will happen that is hilarious enough to cause at least one of your girlfriends to shoot beer out of her nose.

Speaking of which, be patient with your parents. They’re adjusting too, mostly to the fact that you’re a slut.

When the REAL dating begins, take it slow. You’re in no hurry. Avoid the impatient, the aggressive. Be honest with yourself and with the other person in terms of what you can handle. If they decide they want more than you can offer, don’t take it personally, and resist the urge to make promises you can’t keep.

If you do meet someone special, via sluttery or otherwise, go back to the beginning of this post. I can’t promise it’s going to work out any better this time, but it can still be okay. In fact, it can still be better than okay. No future is certain, but the fact remains that there are still countries you haven’t visited. There is still so much to see. Enjoy your life, and do it with someone you care about, and the regret you’re so afraid of will be impossible, even if you wind up getting divorced nine times. Which … okay, you should probably try not to do that, but, you know, whatever. It’s not a contest, and it’s not the end of the world.

FOR EVERYONE

Be brave. Be kind. Take care. Good luck.