Throw yourself into decorating your new apartment. Attack every inch of empty space with vigor and cover them up with framed versions of everything you love. Make sure there isn't any place for your eyes to rest on, lest your mind starts drifting to less desirable places. Gleefully snatch up burgundy towels and bathmats, hope to create a poor man's version of Barbra Streisand's bathroom filled with her favorite colors. Spend up to $150 on items you deem 'necessities', because every apartment deserves a welcome rug with a mustache adornment and the word 'bonjour'. Spend another $150 the following day because you need something to keep yourself from spiraling into a deathtrap of old memories.
Attend the first day of class. Be amused at how the most interesting thing about the lecture are the beautiful stone walls that remind you of a dungeon cellar. Struggle to stay conscious despite the professor's best attempts at hypnotizing you with his unbearably drone-y voice. Laugh along to his jokes to make him feel better about being a 65-year-old teaching a class of youthful students with brighter futures than he. Laugh along to convince the people around you that you're still capable of laughter. Laugh along to release endorphins, because you read somewhere that they can cure heartbreak.
Show up to the first party of the semester. Stand uncomfortably by the side and marvel at the seeming statistical improbability that all these idiots made it to college. Wish you didn't have to be this negative, because everyone's here to have a good time. Pretend the alcohol you're consuming is doing anything for your mood. Stop thinking about how you were the one who got on that plane and left the people you truly fit in with so you could come here and pretend. Tell yourself that this forced social immersion isn't the only way to keep yourself from feeling more alone than you ever had in your life.
Continue to text inappropriate content to the one you've agreed to walk away from. Force yourself to contain your excitement at any sign of a response. Look around the room and imagine what your life would be like if the two of you lived together. Picture how you would arrange both of your possessions in a harmonious yet individualistic manner. Know that you can never force someone to make that kind of change for you. Hope that one day someone might want to. Steadfastly refuse to let go.
Tell yourself you would survive another week. And keep going.
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