This Is How You Move On
1. Get up early.
Even earlier than you’re used to. Walk through the dark to your first cup of coffee. Put your phone in your pocket and keep in there. Hold your cup until your hands thaw, until that feeling moves past your finger tips and onto the rest of you. Keep your head up and follow the traffic lights that trace the streets and line your way. Cry if you need to. It might feel nice to cry into the emptiness.
2. Read in the morning.
Read before bed. Read until your mind is overflowing with someone else’s story, until your blinks become heavy, until your eyelids give up. Make marks on the pages that matter to you. Take the sentences that stick, tuck the rest away. Copy and paste the words to the places you need them, like the top of your nightstand or the back of your bedroom door. Use tape and keep them close and for as long as feels right.
3. Take a new way there, take a new way home, take very little with you.
Leave without knowing exactly where you’re going. Remember what it feels like to be light. Get caught without an umbrella, get lost for an hour. Keep going in whichever direction you’d like. Look down and watch what your steps do to the snow. Look at the marks they make and try to memorize them. Let this memory take the place of ones you’d like to abandon. Wait there until the old ones fall and melt away like flakes. Look up at the street signs, pick out your favorite one. Maybe it’s Mott or Essex or Varick. Make a note and use the name for something else, for something later.
4. Run on a day when you don’t feel like it.
Go anyways. Tie your shoes, leave for longer than you had planned. You might need to wrap yourself in two or three layers, you might see your breath once you start to move. Climb the stairs by the water, run through the narrow park that sits above the city. Sprint past the families and the photo ops. Let your face fill with color. Listen to your heart’s beat and match your steps to the song it forms. Let this rhythm mix with the wind, let this change your tune. And let it take the place of your worn out melody.
5. Write down as many thoughts as you can.
Use a pen and paper. Maybe it’s a few or maybe it’s many. The amount is not important. Rip out the pages you fill and fold them up until they’re small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. Keep them hidden or throw them away and start again. Read them out loud, read them slowly and to yourself. Listen to your voice, listen to it when it’s the only sound in the room. Notice the difference when there’s no one there to receive it. Love it for the sound it makes, love it for what it is, love it for what it can be.