What I'd tell my 25-year-old self the week she filed

Hi love. I know you're sitting in the courthouse parking lot right now with the AC running and the windows up so nobody can see you cry. I know you wore the blazer because you thought it would make you feel like an adult, and instead it just made you feel like a kid in a costume. I want to tell you a few things before you go in.

First, you are not making a mistake. I know everyone keeps asking if you're sure, and I know the question feels like a small knife every time. You are sure. You have been sure for longer than you've let yourself say out loud. The sureness is the reason you finally booked the appointment. Trust the part of you that booked the appointment.

Second, the paperwork is not the hard part. I know that sounds wild from where you're sitting, with a folder of forms on the passenger seat and a pen you stole from the bank. But the forms are just forms. The hard part is the Tuesday in three weeks when you'll go to put your wedding ring back on by accident, because muscle memory is its own grief. The hard part is the first time someone calls you 'Mrs.' at the dentist and you don't correct them because you don't know what to say. Be gentle with the Tuesdays. Be especially gentle with the dentist.

Third, about the guest bedroom at your parents' house. You're going to spend more nights there than you want to admit. You're going to feel like a teenager again, sleeping under a poster you put up in 2014, and you're going to hate it for about a month. Then one night you'll wake up and realize the house is quiet and warm and nobody is angry, and you'll cry a different kind of cry. Let yourself stay as long as you need. Going home is not regression. It's a soft landing, and you've earned a soft landing.

Fourth, the Costco card. You are going to fight about the Costco card. Not because either of you cares about Costco, but because it's the smallest thing on the list and it's safer to fight about than the actual thing. Cancel it. Get a new one in your own name. Buy yourself the rotisserie chicken on the way home. That whole chicken is for you. You don't have to share it with anyone for the rest of your life if you don't want to.

Fifth, your friends are going to surprise you. Some of the people you thought would show up will go quiet, and it will hurt in a specific way that you won't have words for. And then a friend you haven't talked to since college will text you 'hey, I heard, can I bring you soup on Thursday,' and she will mean it, and she will actually bring soup. The people who show up are your people now. Let the rest go without making a project out of it. You don't have the bandwidth, and they don't deserve a goodbye tour.

Sixth. You are allowed to be relieved. Relief is not the same as not having loved him. You can hold both of those at once. The relief is information. It's your body telling you that you weren't actually built for the shape you'd been folding yourself into. Believe the relief. It's the most honest thing you've felt in a year.

Seventh, please drink water. I know you think this is a joke. It is not a joke. You are dehydrated and you have been crying for six weeks. Half of what feels like despair right now is actually just dehydration and not eating real food. Get an electrolyte packet. Order the pad thai. You can be sad with a full stomach.

And finally. You are going to be so okay. Not in a 'and then she became her best self' Pinterest way. In a real way. You're going to wake up on a random Wednesday next October, and you're going to be making coffee in an apartment that is entirely yours, and you're going to realize you haven't thought about him in three days, and it won't even feel like a milestone. It'll just feel like a Wednesday. That's the whole prize. That's what's waiting on the other side of this parking lot.

I love you. Go inside. The blazer looks great.

Lauren, age 27, writing from a kitchen that is entirely hers