Reflections on a pandemic breakup

Last year for The Strand’s Love and Sex issue I wrote an article called “Distance Makes the Heart Grow Longer” about the long-distance relationship I was in at the time. My boyfriend and I broke up around two months after I wrote that article, and if you read it (which I honestly do not recommend), you can sense that the end was near for us in my short, tense sentences. It reads as if I was being held at gunpoint, forced to convince myself and readers that I was fine, I was happy, and I was still in love. I read it back last week, and I realized, after having some critical distance, how lost I was when I wrote it, and how much more whole I feel now.

I spent the first months of the pandemic reeling from that heartbreak. Breakups are hard. Breakups are hard when you realize that your lives are changing, and things can’t work anymore. Breakups are really hard when they are immediately preceded by six months of social isolation. I was grieving my relationship and the life I had known for almost two years while everyone else was grieving the loss of the world as they knew it. 

The pandemic has accelerated a lot of relationships. Couples that were just getting to know each other in the beginning have become more serious, and maybe even more couples have broken up. And now, almost seven months into the pandemic, more and more of my friends are going through what I went through in March: recovering from a breakup in relative solitude.

For everyone who is going through a breakup, still struggling with one, or contemplating ending a relationship, I want you to know that my breakup was one of the best things that could have happened to me, and that spending the pandemic single has given me the chance to know myself again. I am so much happier now than the girl who wrote that love letter last year, and all it took was a global pandemic, months of involuntary self-isolation, and journaling.

It is incredible how quickly you can lose sight of your own spirit. When my ex and I broke up and everything shut down, I moved back home. I spent a long time trying to remember how I passed time before I made someone else my priority. In some ways, I had forgotten what I liked, and what having a spare minute alone in my head felt like. So, it was in my childhood room, surrounded by the life I had created for myself before I was ever in a relationship, that I remembered what I was all about. I spent the summer painting and going on socially distanced walks with old friends or by myself. The pandemic gave me the chance to rediscover myself, and I am so thankful for the time I had to do that. 

The pandemic also allows you to confront your emotions. Keeping yourself occupied and keeping your mind off things is one of the main pieces of advice people give when you are going through a breakup. But during the pandemic, with so much time at home, it is almost impossible to distract yourself from your feelings. Clubs are closed, traveling is restricted, and social distancing is required. True distraction was almost not even an option. Of course, there were small ways to find distractions, but I found that the solitude caused by the pandemic pushed me to come to terms with my feelings more quickly than I would have otherwise. I could sit with myselff and reflect. This reflection was manifested in journaling, and, for me at least, this was a key part of healing.

The final aspect of recovering from a pandemic breakup, or any breakup at all, is time. This one is the toughest because it means that you have to trust that with time you will feel better. In fact, a friend of mine beautifully explained a theory about recovering from heartbreak that helped me immensely. He explained that the pain of heartbreak is lessened just a little each night when you sleep. If a broken heart is like a painful memory, then every night your body builds a little coating around it. In theory: with time, the memory stops stinging so badly. This is to say, you need to ride it out and put time between yourself and the event. Just like with living in the pandemic itself, you need to trust that things will go back to normal. And I promise you that they will.

Of course, the pandemic poses challenges to healing, especially when you can’t easily see friends or find distractions. But what I have learned is that no matter how hard the breakup, you need to take time to find yourself again, you need to confront your feelings, and you need to know that with time you will feel better again. When my relationship ended it felt like everything ended, and in some ways that is true. I contemplated the relationship that I did not want to end in a world that had ended as I knew it, one that had ended in a way that was likewise beyond my control. But I was alone, and I healed. After almost a year, I am happier than I have ever been, and I am slowly watching things begin again.