Immediately after the breakup
Tears, obviously. You’re only human. You don’t tell anyone else, not yet. Tonight the news is just for you. You sleep in the same bed as your now-ex. You’re only human.
The day after
You start to tell people. You’ve never believed in sugarcoating the truth, and you relay the news accordingly. Your best friends call you back instantly. You suspect there are side chats about the news. One of your friends treks to Brooklyn and sits on a park bench in Prospect Park with you. You exist in silence together, watching the geese. He forces you to eat something, and you remember love is still present in your life.
Later that week
You finally tell your family. You don’t know why you sat on the news for a few days. You’re not ashamed, necessarily, but you’re nervous to admit that this attempt at Forever Love did not last. Your parents ask if you want to come home, and you do. Your sister holds your hand the entire train ride. You remember love is still present in your life.
Later that month
You get a little delusional. You decide it’s your right, post-breakup, and that you’re going to live the life you always wanted. This is an early attempt at starting over, and it goes about as well as you’d expect. You tour an apartment for sale that you’re convinced is a steal. You run your fingers over the steel appliances in the recently renovated kitchen (ample natural light) and only snap back to reality when a friend gently reminds you that the weeks after a breakup aren’t the right time to make life-altering financial decisions.
The next month
You join a sapphic sports league. It turns out that as a sporty dyke, you love being in community with other sporty dykes. As a bonus, most of them are hot. You begin to look forward to your Sundays, doing a full face of makeup before sweating it all off. It’s the first thing you’ve looked forward to in a while.
You go to a queer bathhouse party. This is another attempt at starting over. You signed up for a ticket around the same time you toured the apartment for sale, and thirty minutes into the party you discover you are perhaps not the right audience for this event, at least not right now, not yet. You have more mourning to do, and no one at this party wants to hear about the latest controversy at your ceramics studio.
Your grandmother passes. You pause your attempts at starting over and instead head home. You grieve. You see family and family friends you haven’t seen in over a decade. You get a hug from a woman who feels like a second mother, and you remember love is still present in your life.
Before summer ends
You throw a breakup party. Fitting, then, that you wrote about throwing a divorce party last year for Autostraddle. It feels minimizing to call it a breakup, but “dissolving a legal partnership” is a mouthful. You invite all your crushes to the party, and your group expands to take up two long tables in the backyard of a Bed-Stuy wine bar. Your friends take turns ordering bottles for the table, and you get appropriately sloshed under the gentle glow of string lights.
You go on your first date in seven years. You’re nervous, but it turns out to be totally fine. You then go on more dates, with more people. You enjoy being on the apps, much to your (and everyone else’s) surprise. You chalk it up to the novelty of it all.
In the fall
You use a hefty chunk of both your PTO and credit card points and spend three weeks on a condensed Eat, Pray, Love. You swim in the glittering Mediterranean, you get your t*tties bedazzled at a sapphic rave in Seoul, and you eat your body weight in tempura in Tokyo. You come back and reclaim the places you used to associate with your last relationship. You go on a date at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, you kiss another on the steps of the Prospect Park Boathouse. You are still in love with Brooklyn, you learn. You will still have that.
You go to your first wedding as a single person. You realize, for the first time in perhaps your entire adult life, you are the single friend in a group of partnered people. It’s a new feeling, not necessarily a bad one.
You romance yourself. A trope post-breakup, sure, but it exists for a reason. You start to buy yourself flowers weekly, you take yourself to a play you’ve wanted to see for ages. You become a regular at a restorative yoga class and find a new favorite SoulCycle instructor. This is who you were before, and it’s who you’re returning to.
You romance your friends. You vow to never again become the type of friend who views friendship as less important than a romantic relationship, because it is your friends (and sister) who are carrying you through this breakup. You take your friends on dates, to Broadway shows and cocktail bars and invite everyone — everyone! — to everything. Your friends joke that every third Partiful invite they receive is from you, and they’re not wrong. You’ll use any excuse to bring people together.
You redecorate your apartment. You buy a rug, you change your couch orientation. You throw a decidedly second-gen house-blessing (pooja) ceremony that involves light incense, zero chanting, ample pizza. You throw a housewarming a few weeks later, and you make tiramisu. You invent a game and make everyone play.
At some point
You realize you’re living your fullest life you’ve lived in a long time. Sure, you’re burning yourself out (maybe a second Sapphic sport wasn’t really necessary) but it’s worth it. You’re surrounded by love, platonic and familial, friendships from more than 15 years ago and friendships that are three months old. You’re going to be just fine, you decide. You’re already doing more than fine.
