1. Take yourself out to dinner and buy two bottles of fancy wine, then down them in gulps while you wait for the appetizers to arrive. Order the most expensive entrees; try something new-duck slathered in plum sauce, leg of lamb with fresh parsley on the side. Then smile at all the other patrons as they watch you enjoy that slice of thick, luscious chocolate cake like you used to enjoy his mouth.
2. Don’t send him any drunk texts you’d regret. Text him sober and impress him with your knowledge of legal jargon; tell him he has 24 hours to get out of your apartment before you throw his laptop out the window.
3. Leave voicemails on his machine in which all he can hear is the sound of you breathing, soft, hushed, until he has to count the seconds between pauses. Make it ten minutes long, so he has to wait until the very end of the message just to find out you never said a damn word.
4. Go outside in the middle of a lightning storm and take all your clothes off; wait for the rain to drench you and turn your face up to it, open your mouth and let it all in. Dance out there in the rain, as the lightning pulses across the sky like a heartbeat, and let all the water wash away his taste from your mouth, his hands from your body. Let them fade into the past like mistakes erased from an exam.
5. Write every single nasty thing you’ve ever wanted to say to him since the breakup on a tiny scrap of paper and shove it into a glass bottle, then throw it out to sea where it will bob over the waves for months, perhaps even years. Let your words slowly float in the middle of the wide open sea until the bottle crashes into a cluster of sharp rocks, cracks open, and your words sink to the bottom of the ocean, where they swiftly drown.
6. Go shopping, by yourself, and buy two of the hottest little black dresses you can find. Actually, buy a third one too, and make it bright red. And get a pair of heels to match. After all, who knows when they might come in handy?
7. Rip up all his mixtapes, tear them into pieces like confetti and flush them down the toilet. Make yourself a new mixtape instead, this time a revenge one. Dance to it at night when the tenants below you are asleep; let every shake of your hips be another reason why he should have stayed.
8. Realize that in a loving relationship, the boyfriend should never have a spare girlfriend for the first. Understand that you were the spare girlfriend, and that you have every right to remove someone toxic from your life.
9. Go on a roadtrip to Ohio or Washington and climb a mountain; stand at the very pinnacle and shout his name at the top of your lungs, until the wind carries it away.
10. For every photo he posts of his new girlfriend on his Facebook page, post one of your own-you, standing there smiling in your new red dress. Don’t get a fake boyfriend to pose with or hold hands with; the only person in that photo should be you. Show him you’re happier single than you ever were together.