an emotional roadmap thru dumpsville.

When people get shit-canned by that "special someone," they go through the Five Stages of Grief.

But how long you spend in each stage, and how intense each stage is, differs from person to person (figure on anywhere from Momentary Blinding Pain to Eternal Searing Agony in the Fires-of-Hell, roughly).

Using this handy guide, you can roughly determine exactly how long you'll need to borrow your friends' The Cure CD.

Hollywood hits and "mature" movies (wink, wink), mailed discreetly

STAGE ONE: DENIAL

When you first get your heart physically ripped from your chest and stomped on, your mind immediately reacts to protect you from the shock by shutting down. Similar to having a limb cut off, the event is so traumatic that your nervous system can't register the pain as highly as it deserves, so it doesn't register any pain at all.

This systemwide neural boycott is a form of emotional self-preservation. One that results in delusions like "Wow, if this breakup was really happening to me, I would be sooooo seriously fucked right now." And ignoring painful reality is also how some people maintain irrational beliefs like "That hot stripper doesn't just want my money, she really likes me!" It's pure denial, and luckily, it passes.

Dr. Snake's Voodoo Spellbook Chapter 1: "Bring Back A Lost Lover"

STAGE TWO: ANGER

When the reality of your situation finally dawns—and you realize that you are indeed sooo seriously fucked—the shock of Denial will be replaced with the violence of Anger. Actually, blind rage is more like it.

In Stage Two, you will become the biggest asshole the world has ever known. You will do lots of asshole things, like punching walls and starting fights. You will rage at friends, family and strangers who were just looking for the restroom when you hit them with that piano. You will pull a full-on Neanderthal rampage, trashing your car, your apartment and everything in it. Nothing will escape your wrath, not even Nuns and kittens.

In your brief, lucid moments, you will regret being such an asshole and that will only make you even angrier. Eventually, when you are beaten into submission by the police and dragged away to jail, the anger will finally subside. For the most part.

Everlast 2966 Boxing Gloves (16 oz.) Wanna work off some rage?

STAGE THREE: BARGAINING

By the time your prison sentence is up, you'll have come to accept your powerlessness over the breakup. With no ability to change what happened, you'll do what any typical human would do to make the best of a bad situation: You'll try to swing a deal.

The bargaining phase usually involves praying to the deity of your choice—if not the girl herself—for one last screw. Failing that, you'll try a lot of pointless grasping at straws, including promising to change, buying her extravagant gifts, and even proposing marriage.

Or, assuming you aren't out of the Anger stage entirely, using voodoo dolls so your Ex contracts leprosy, gets hit by a bus, or both. Either way, bargaining is your last resistance to the inevitable.

STAGE FOUR: DEPRESSION

This Stage begins when you finally bend over and take it up the ass (figuratively, of course). Hard and rough, the truth finally sinks in up to the hilt and you now know how truly fucked you are.

You will feel as if you just ate a rancid burrito the size of Mexico. In other words, you will feel like shit. For a long time. During which time, you will listen to The Cure, and finally "get" it. You will cry more than the time you had your back hair waxed off.

You will become one of those pathetic losers you used to laugh at. You will become a full-on, grade-A pussy. You will not want to get out of bed. You will not want to talk to anyone. You will not socialize, except much later, and then only to prove you're "over her." In doing so, you will get way too drunk and puke yourself dry.

Then you will feel like shit some more. This cycle will repeat itself until you are dragged away to jail. Again.

STAGE FIVE: ACCEPTANCE

Assuming you haven't done something pointlessly stupid and melodramatic during Stage Four (like offing yourself or writing love poems), you will one day come to accept your new datelessness. It may take awhile, but eventually, you will deal with the loss. Then, you will wake up and be very surprised to find that the world didn't come to a screeching halt just because your feelings got hurt.

The sad reality is that, this sort of shit happens all the fucking time. To everybody. And everybody gets over it eventually (except needy attention-whores who just want pity. Fuck them.) So don't expect to use your breakup as an excuse to get out of work for more than a day or two at best. Three, if you're really lucky (which clearly, you aren't).