How to start to mend after THAT breakup

I’m gonna tell you guys something. I said I would never write about this, and that I wasn’t going to be that much of a writing-therapy cliché hybrid by writing about my breakup. But here I am, I can no longer contain my thoughts in my brain without having a full kitchen floor reset at my mothers so we are going to talk about it, and hopefully, what I’m going to say will help, you aren’t going to feel a new lease of life after reading this, nothing will magically get better. But it might make you feel like you aren’t alone.

SO, my breakup happened after a full two years of a passionate, beautiful gay relationship. She was my best friend in the whole world, no one understood me like her and no one understood her like me, we spend weekends fucking for three days straight only to not want to leave each others side at the end of it, we made even the most mundane job fun. She said to me once ‘I’m going to keep asking you to marry me until I can’, and every time she asked, I would always say yes. Readers I am not in the slightest exaggerating when I say that this woman was my insides, she saved me from a violent relationship, built up my self worth, and flooded my world with colour and the type of connection and melting kisses that you only see in films or your most intense sex dreams. Clearly I am not over this woman, and that is why I am in the best position to write about this right now. I’ve dragged my ass out of bed, put on my “best” leggings, washed my face and sat down to tell this story. I currently feel like a microwaved old pizza, might've been good once, the thought of another pizza is good, but what I currently am is beaten by what's happened to me, and my mushrooms, let me tell you, are shrivelled as all fuck.

My friend has just finished a conversation with me over the phone and told me to go for a walk in nature, kind hearted and amazing as she is all of you that are reading this will know how utterly infuriating that is when you feel that you are constantly bailing the grief out of your heart like a sinking ship. Fuck nature, lets get real.

My breakup was a long and confused one, not the clean and loving place that I thought I would end up with this person because the truth is? In real life, no you absolutely cannot be friends if you are still in love with this person. No matter how much you want it, and no matter how much the thought of them not being the first person you think of when you want to tag someone in a meme stings.

It was gay pride in Brighton, I am a singer for a living and had thusly four quite large audiences to entertain the day after, we were supposed to wake up together after a night of laughter and love the way we usually did, have breakfast, and then I would go on to entertain at least 4,000 people that day. What actually happened is that I woke up in my bed, with her not next to me. We had had a fight the night before and she had left, meaning that the nightmare I thought I hadn't woken up from yet was in fact real. If you've ever been in this situation you’ll know that at this point you have no feeling in your extremities and you think you are going to constantly be sick. That part I’m here to tell you will genuinely leave you at a week, tops. What comes after is straight up denial no matter the hair cut you just got (because you want them to see it right?) or the person you just took out on a date (that you’ll never see again because they aren’t your ex right?) or the fact that you’re eating so healthy (because when your ex comes back you’re going to need to be the best version of you right?). Denial is probably the hardest of all the breakup emotions because it'll have you doubting every single thing, it'll have you thinking they are going to come and get you with profound apologies, roses and promises that they’ll never let you go again. When in reality my ex is in fact, in another relationship that she got into about a week after we broke it off. Denial is lying to you guys, and you’ve got to beat that fucker back with a stick every chance you get. If you’re in the agonising wake of a breakup we are waging a war with our brains right now. We feel like if we could just see them one more time, hear them say we are wonderful one more time, everything would be okay, which is why behaviours like Facebook stalking, remaining friends and hanging out with them are a total and utter no go. You want to be with them, don’t even fucking try and lie, so save yourself, they are never coming back (and if they do, it certainly wont be the result of wishful thinking, it'll be six months down the line when you’ve grown as people and you have realised that you’re actually great without a partner).

I know that when your lost love fills your head its so hard to focus on anything else. I’ve read every article, listened to every soft spoken TED talk about self love but what I really want to share with you is the way I am currently getting through this mess, even though yes, I am still in love, and yes, it still hurts like I have bees in my brain and lead in my heart.

The best way I have found to even begin processing your life again after a 9.0 breakup on the earthquake meter is to get your revenge by living well. You want to get all drunk and messy? Go for it but that shits got an expiration date my friend, start smugly living your life in your own mind. Really kill it at work, do amazing things for other people (seriously the last one helped me so much, think about others for a minute, it helps when you’re in a “why am I so useless and unlovable” loop) and focus on what you really want. Your life it feels is in complete tatters, like a dog has just got hold of your five year plan and turned it into confetti, you may aswell asses each piece of confetti and decide whether you want to keep it because chances are a lot of what you kept in your life was made tolerable by your ex. You hate you job? Go get a new one, go back to school, whatever, we are in a new state of life cycle meaning that a caterpillar turns into goo before it becomes a butterfly. This is your chance to take the decimation that they left behind and really look at your life and make it something new, no its never going to be the same Barbara, but its going to be different, and still amazing.

The piece of advice the media would have you believe helps is go and sleep with someone else. I’m here to tell you if you already haven't, you will, and that is going to make you feel so. Much. Worse. But the fallout from that will feel different. You are no longer unsexy or unlovable but everything will probably feel just... wrong if you were as deeply in love with your ex as I am. Take it down a gear, no one gets to tell you how long to grieve, or how long to be single. We've all got to finish being goo before we meet another butterfly.

Try everything that makes you feel good (except anything illegal, however tempting criminal damage may be) and very very slowly, you will start to feel like a person again. Your friends and family are probably at peak compliment mode right now telling you how brilliant and lovely you are, for fuck sake believe them, you need it. I’m not saying this is going to be easy for any of us in this predicament, but I believe the fog will lift, and that I will feel powerful and brilliant again, and for now that's enough.