note to self. and anyone else who might need it.

I love this book by Anna Johnson called "All you need to survive are three black skirts". I've painstakingly copied some excerpts that I like from the book that may be helpful to you now or in the future.

Love myth: There's nothing like the real thing.

I don't believe there is a real substitute for intimate human love and romance. It's natural to miss the heady rush of falling in love - the way it heightens every one of our senses and replaces the monotony of the solitary life with drama and dimension. Once tasted, it's hard to live without. But if you're in between loves, how are you going to live in the meantime? In a dreary self-absorbed vacuum or a vibrant playground? I say, get out the fingerpaints. Try to see the world for a day a an artist sees it - passionately!

Romancing your life creates energy, energy makes you happy, being happy brings back your sense of humor, and laughing makes you pretty. Everyone is suddenly asking you "Are you in love?" and all you have to say is "Yes, in fact, I am in love - with snails and poems and pastry flour and a cloud shaped liked Mozart's ponytail and Justin Timberlake's voice and my nephew's big toe and the smell of fresh sheets and the squish of wet sand and the way I feel when I sing in my car - but other than that, no, not really."

Love myth: Love is for life.

Many books will tell you that the aim of love is, eventually, to find the person with whom you can settle down, the person who is willing to have a long-term, serious relationship. Not this book. The idea of finding "the one" or the idea that marriage is a superior relationship leaves far too much in its wake. A woman may love four men in her lifetime, and they may have not been her lovers. A woman may mother a child with one partner but chose to love and live with another woman later on. A woman may have many brief relationships to find that marriage suits her much much later in life, or not at all. The idea that we must find someone whom we can share our life with is anachronism, for we are sharing our lives with a broad range of special people at any given time. Focus on the one and we may miss out on the beauty and contribution of many.

On heartbreak:
The best way to get over a broken heart is to treat it like a boil. Lance the inflamation, release the pus (and there can be quite a lot), clean the wound and then let the healing proceed. Amelia Sedley in Vanity Fair sniffled into a hanky for fifteen years over a total cad, but Amelia was a piteous wimp and the object of Thackery's satire. Give it six months to a year and then for goodness' sake contain the wallow. You are not Morrisey or Morisette, so don't moon unless you're being paid royalties to do so. Don't let your past gobble up the potential of your future. You might meet the love of your life at a support group or just hours after you've been kissed off.

Your veil of melancholy will lift - but you must be vigilant. Stringently edit past associations - certain places, certain songs, certain turns of phrase, pet names and baby talk. Stop idealizing the initmacy you once had and establish new routines. Try not to imagine how your ex-lover would respond to the new you, and don't fall back on wanting that approval. If you get tempted to see your ex - to parade that hard-won, fragile new confidence - forget about it. You are not changing for your ex. You are changing for yourself.

A haircut is a symbolic action even if it's just a trim. Spruce up with some organic color (henna or Herbatint), have a deep condition treatment, cut off your split ends, and kiss your dead-end dreams goodbye. Beware of home jobs with nail scissors.

Coddle yourself. Burn scented candles, pout beautiful in lipstick the color of crushed roses, buy some soft angora socks and wear them in bed.

Milk the venom. Resentment, unexpressed anger, hurt and feelings of violation are like toxins. Left to fester inside, they can harden you for years. Get them out through creative channels - or just plain destructive ones - paint it out, wail and smash your pillow. Anything totally absorbing, and physically exhausting is good. Later, much later, when you've come down from your cathartic freak-out, you may come to see a hurtful love experience as a lesson. But first set to clearing the darkness out of your heart.