Are You An English Major?

If you are, I'd like to ask you a few questions:

1) Do you read the required novels on time, every time?

2) If so, do you enjoy that?

3) Are you both critical and creative in your essays?

4) Do you find symbolic meaning in every word you see?

5) Do you get 80s on most essays?

6) Do you feel like an incompetent, illiterate fool if you don't?

I am an English Major at the University of Toronto, and today I came to the realization:

I hate studying English at U of T. I hate writing essays. I am neither argumentative nor creative.

I have no passion or interest for dwelling on the meaning of certain words nor the placement of particular commas.


I cannot tell you why I Majored in English. I truly can't.

How to Handle a Break-up in Your Twenties

Cry.

Get it all out. Don't even bother trying to play the part of the person who couldn't care less - unless you do. If you're hurt, cry. What's important here is to allot an amount of time for mourning.

I'd say give yourself a week. An entire week. Allow yourself to slack off, cry yourself to sleep, become engorged with chocolate and ice cream, or survive on cigarettes, coffee and weed as I have. You get the point, give yourself a week to hit rock bottom. Listen to love songs, stare at their Facebook profile pictures, wait for their name to appear on the screen of your phone, begin text messages that you have no courage to send (don't send them unless you know exactly what you're doing), reminisce about all the things you could've said...would've said...should've said.

And then, by the end of the week, let go. Let go of their face, of the detail around their eyes. Let go of their scent and the shape of their nail-bed. Because it's gone now.

Thinking about the ghosts of their presence will do nothing but drive you to the madhouse.

By letting go, this is what I mean:

- thank God for their presence in your life - it was there for a reason, we may not be ready to know
- accept that what you had was beautiful but that the reason for it's end is telling.
- it ended because it had to
- release the memories from your mind
- do not torture yourself by regurgitating these memories
- put them in a box and hide it away at the back of your mind

Now,

Find assurance or comfort in the fact that life is a very curious thing. There just might be a time where you become two people that are now ready to take on the world together. Consider the time apart as prep. You had to develop on your own to become the person who just might fit your once-love's life.

Go out with your friends. I know how much I hate when people say that. "Keep busy". "Find a hobby". "Call up an old friend"

You really don't have to do any of this. What I do recommend is a daily joint. When your body is numb, somehow, you're able to repeal thoughts that might hurt you. Or you find the answers you were searching for.

If you don't smoke weed then just do what you love. If you play the piano, you hammer away at that thing. If you play soccer, you take every chance you get to run around on that field.

Eventually you will have filled the void with other things. With things you love, or help you grow. And then just like that - you've forgotten what it was like to be unhappy.

I'm only two days in. Wish me luck.