How to Grieve Like a Machine (And Then Go for a Walk)

If he hurts you, just “be still.”

If he doesn’t want you, just sit with it.

If he doesn’t choose you, say nothing.

If he doesn’t love you, it’s none of your business anymore.

If she leaves you, hold steady.

If she betrays you, be thoughtful and present.

If they die on you, just take solace.

There are only five separate stages of numbing psychology to endure

and countless piles of awkward phrases coming at you.

Everyone means well.

If the group of girls who loved you ferociously hard—

who lifted you like a princess onto their floating cloud of a throne

high above the middle school—

just abruptly shoves you off the fluffy cliff

into an abyss of isolated gaslighting?

Just “take a breather.” Take a break.

Or…

Rage like the relentlessly rotating steel fangs of a rotary drill bit

grinding into the pain with an unquenchable thirst for sorrow.

Descend.

Bite through the earth.

Tear through eons,

chewing sandstone, shale, and buried time.

Let your grief ravage—

leaving only chaos, where silence once rested.

Then go to therapy. Reflect.

Practice detachment.

Collect hobbies.

Do EMDR.

Journal.

Like the pretentious, shallow, new-age human you strive to be.

Next, feel your heart sink and hollow out,

as if you cracked the shell of earth

like it was just that thin. That fragile.

Mud churns up like blood from a wound

weighted and watching,

cooling the fury,

carrying secrets no sun has seen.

Frack into your darkest pain with hydraulic fury—

high-pressure veins of water and grit

splintering rock with whispered explosions,

as your heart, compliant…breaks.

Let your memories flare and bloom against dusk—

an orange rage licking the wind,

burning what can’t be bottled,

a skyborn offering to efficiency.

Let your anger pump and nod like beasts in heat—

iron lungs breathing oil,

pulling pulse from fossil shadows,

every stroke a sacrifice of depth.

Roar.

Hiss.

Until the field is hushed,

and the wells run dry.

And you just don’t feel so strongly about it anymore.

But even then—

the ghost of aggression hums beneath,

waiting for the next tap,

the next war

with the patient dark.

Or… you can go for a walk.

Forget your cell phone.

Read a quote from Simon.

Or Mel.

After all,

you’re a human.

Not a machine.