Scarleteen

One of my very best friends experienced a very big breakup about five months into the pandemic. It was unexpected, it was very sad, and he was already struggling with feeling disconnected and isolated due to losing all his other in-person social connections. It's been very, very rough on him.

If you've experienced a breakup in this -- whether it was agreed upon, or you were the breakup-er or the breakup-ee -- how are you doing? What kind of support has been hardest to find in this? What do you need? What's been hardest and easiest?

If you're thinking about a breakup, how are you feeling about that? Do you feel able to sort out what you want and make decisions, or has COVID changed that for you?

I managed to break up with the same person twice since March...As I always find with heart-achey breakups, to start with it sucked HARD and later on I got motivated!

In some ways, it felt like grieving at a point where literally everyone was also facing massive shifts in the ways they lived felt sort of "right" - like my life wasn't on pause as I figured my stuff out, EVERYONE'S life was on pause. And I was lucky that a lot of my friends and community reached out in different ways so I still felt connected to something. Those little texts from people who I might usually see in a group setting but rarely hang out with 1:1 were really touching.

Plus the COVID-breakup combo gave me a lot of time to reflect, and creative energy to pour into new projects so I got to make a whole bunch of changes to my life that I'm honestly really excited about. It took a big mental shift though, to start thinking "what can I do?" rather than getting bogged down in the losses.

I think the fact that it happened early on, while everyone was adjusting worked in my favour, because everyone was looking for connection in new ways, and less just zoom-fatigued and straight-up exhausted with the whole thing than now perhaps.

The worst bit was I was in the middle of a mental health crisis already, and separating out the pieces was difficult, but I eventually started on medication for it for the first time and it was one of those eye-opening "why didn't I do this sooner?" kind of moments.