There’s that line in “The Fault in Our Stars” about how falling in love is like falling asleep (“slowly, and then all at once”), which I think more accurately describes the act of breaking up. Long before the relationship ends, you start to notice the small acts of betrayal — the silences, the broken commitments, the disinterest in the minor victories of your day.
After a pleasant morning together in bed, he casually announces, as if telling you his dinner preference: “I’m not sure if I ever want to get married again.” He kisses you on the forehead, and leaves. A month later, he mentions her name for the first time. You should probably probe further, he’s almost inviting you to. But you don’t. You know you are already standing in the middle of a burning building.
“Maybe we both need some space,” you suggest, half-heartedly, in a text. Translation: “This house is on fire. Come build something new with me.” One week later, it’s the night before your 32nd birthday, and your partner of a year is on the other end of the phone telling you he’s booked a transatlantic flight to visit a woman. “What? Who?” But you know who. All at once, you’ve fallen into a nightmare.
That’s the story of my breakup — or one version of it, at least.
In the weeks following that night in January 2023, my greatest fear was an endless row of empty white boxes on my Gmail calendar. So I committed to every freelance assignment, accepted every social invitation, bought plane tickets to foreign cities, signed up for workout classes, and performed stand-up comedy for the first time in my life. I scheduled happy hours, brunches, and dinners — alone and with friends, with women I admired and men who made me laugh.
Over the summer, a new friend (who went through her own brutal breakup a year earlier) passed out while home alone in her apartment, leaving her with two rows of black stitches dotted across her chin for ten days. I offered support in the only way I knew how — by sending her an invite to a drag queen event where “glitter” was the suggested attire. “Let’s go!!!!”
She wrote back: “hmmm… glitter in my wound??”
Alas, the perfect metaphor for a post-breakup year was born.
I smeared a lot of glitter in my wounds this year. Even on my lowest days, you would rarely find me wallowing on my couch — instead I blew out my hair, plastered on a fake smile, and strutted (OK, more like stumbled) into The World. And you know what? I was better off for it.
Being a single woman in your thirties means living with the lingering fear that you are getting left behind. No matter how well things are going, you sense that if you don’t have a ring, or a baby, or a mortgage, then your life may be a little less meaningful than the woman’s beside you.
But this year, I was reminded how exciting life can be when you are open to connection and possibility.
I experienced so many weird, serendipitous, fun, funny moments in 2023. I have nothing permanent to show for most of those memories — some lasted for only a few hours, some with strangers who I may never see again. There is something beautiful in that impermanence, in feeling like your life isn’t a series of steps on a predetermined timeline, but rather, a collage of mismatched threads that shape you in invisible ways.
Of course, the grief still seeps in at unexpected times — in a stranger’s bed on a Saturday night, in line at Whole Foods on a random Tuesday, 30,000 feet in the air while watching “Past Lives” on a red eye flight. Yeah, I cried plenty this year. I also watched my dear friends grieve, and I realized how unfair and delicate and infuriating life can be.
Today is my 33rd birthday, and I might cry a little, but then, I’m going to dab some glitter shadow on my eyelids and go out with my friends and laugh and maybe flirt, because life is painful, but it’s also exciting, and, at times, it is so, so good.
This post is dedicated to Wendy Spicer, who brightened everyone’s days, and to Erika, who continues to.