I sold every piece of jewelry you ever bought me. I cried. Then I went shoe shopping.

I told myself I was over and over until I believed it.

I've recently started to spot lost single gloves everywhere: lying crumpled on a snowy pavement, slouched in a seat on a tube carriage, dangling from a fencepost in the park, grubby hand outstretched from a garden wall. They seem so forlorn. Are there always this many, or have I only now started to notice them? Is it a winter thing? I've begun to take photographs of lost gloves, collect them and make labels of where I found them. I keep them together in a box.

I put on my red lippy, darling, and get back out there and smile.

Whenever I need to get over someone I go out and walk my dog on my own.

I’ve chosen photos from our albums without you in them: my 21st birthday, my graduation, my first flat, my first house, the first Christmas without my grandma, me above the clouds at the top of Ben Nevis with my sister, my first kitten, my dogs, my last Christmas with my nana, my first trip to Italy, me dancing like an Egyptian at the Pyramids, my parents kissing in Vienna, laughing with my family in the park, my first dive, sitting on the bonnet on the Pacific Coast Highway, my first 10K. You both took great photos.

I wore sunglasses for a month. Then I started to feel like a bit of a tit.

I moved twelve times in nine years to find a new home, each time finding a few things that were less important than the last time they were carefully wrapped and packed.

I discovered that I don’t need a chipped bowl, a cardigan with a coffee stain, a photo of the Duomo that was never properly framed, half a set of candle holders, insurance documents for rings I no longer own, a cracked makeup mirror from the National Gallery, half a set of placements, a lighter & cigarette case (I no longer smoke), half a tool kit, bed linen for beds we no longer own, cassette compilations a decade after ditching my last tape player, half of a story that made everyone laugh each time we told it, a wholesale supply of micropore tape (I no longer bite my nails), keys for properties we no longer own, half a conversation that ripped us in four, small change in lira, francs or pesetas.

I used your photograph as a dartboard.

I had sex with your friend in your living room, while you were in the other room
I had sex with your friend in my living room, while you were in the other room
I cried, a lot, and didn't dare think about you
I walked from Waterloo to Stepney and thought my way back into my life
I walked through a desert with only a moon for company
I cried, a lot, and thought about you all the time until it stopped
I can't remember

I deleted all the emails you sent me. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. CLICK.

I sat down and wrote this:

Red Balloons

I filled them with my breath
Then stuck them to the wall with pins,
Five red balloons, plump as cushions
And in the shape of hearts.

The days pass, I wait for them
To shrivel up and waste away quietly
As is usual,
But they remain the same.

Shiny heads gorged with air
Hanging from strangled necks.

I do not take them down or even
Touch them for fear they will
Burst in my empty hands.

I went to your wedding and saw the way you looked at the man you were marrying.

I phoned my best friends and raved about you for hours. I told the story of you and me over and over until my throat felt as if I’d swallowed road grit and I couldn’t say another word.

I made a list of all the people I'd had a crush on before you. It was quite long.

An unhealthy combination of love poetry and furious masturbation.

I stalked him on every Internet dating site each day for the first year, then once a month for the second year. After that, I occasionally went on an all night bender of him online, parsing the words in his updated profile, studying his aging face in his photos, and scoffing at the man he purported to be -- all the while feeling myself longing for him and hearing myself call his name in despair.

He telephoned me again after seven years. He called me monthly, then weekly, then daily. He had two successive relationships with Internet women over the next six months while we talked. Both women rejected him and he was drenched in misery. I commiserated and kept waiting for him to . . . you know, but he didn't.

Last summer, after a late-night telephone call from him in which he recapped the events of his day, I booted up my computer and fired off a one-sentence email, "I'm letting you go." I added a PS that read, "For all the reasons you may think I am doing this, I want you to know that every single one of them is correct." He telephoned, but I did not return the call.

A couple of months after we split up i realised i still had your toothbrush in my bathroom whilst i was having a cleaning spree. So i used it to clean those hard to reach areas around the base of my toilet. It still makes me smile when i think about it now.

I did quite a few things when I split up with my ex - cried a lot, drank a lot, read a lot of self-help books and spent more time with my closest girlfriends. But I think probably the most interesting thing I did was a cutting cord ceremony. I went to my friend's houseboat, taking with me many treasured notes, cards, memories, photos, and even photocopied notes from his journal where he had chronicled the wonderful beginings of our relationship and us falling in love. I put all of this in a purple box, tied it up with a black velvet ribbon, said thank you to him, and visualised cutting any remaining cords between us. Then my friend and I burnt smudge sticks and floated the box (and him with it) down the Thames. Sounds crazy but it worked...

I have two (they're separate instances):

I went dancing with my friends and hooked up with someone 10 times hotter than you.

I met my soulmate.