In all of the time that I spent planning out this blog — what topics I was going to write about, what I wanted to say — I never thought I was going to write about today’s topic: heartbreak and dating in your 20s.

Up until a few weeks ago, I was in what I considered to be my final, eternal relationship; we were together for two years and often talked about marriage down the line. He was someone who could practically read my mind, our souls so entwined it was difficult to decipher where he ended and I began. The search was over! I had found my soulmate. The suffering through uncomfortable Tinder conversations and awkward first dates during my college years was over; I had found the person I was going to spend the rest of my life with.

Then he broke up with me.

I have been dumped many, many times before. I’ve even been the one to do the dumping from time to time! But each of those previous relationships were only a few months long and none of them could’ve prepared me for heartbreak like this. When a guy dumps you after three months of dating, it sucks, but you pour a drink, hang out with your best friends, and pull yourself together relatively quickly. When a guy dumps you after two years of dating, it stops your world in its tracks. He was my best friend, the first person I’d call when I had something to share and now we do not speak. 

And my friends have been awesome, I truly have the greatest support system someone could ever wish for, but there is still a gap where his presence used to be. After two years with someone, they become ingrained in everything you do. They’re part of your routines and schedules, someone whose orbit is intersected with your own, making it impossible to not notice their absence. While I have moved past the initial shock and mourning of the breakup, it is still fresh enough that I am reminded of him in the most seemingly innocuous of times – seeing his favorite beer in the grocery store, entering a shop and thinking “oh he’d like this,” or discovering a new show and immediately wanting to share it with him. This is not the same heartbreak that I experienced at eighteen; this is something living, disorienting, and guttural. 

What does one do when the future they had planned for themselves gets pulled out from under them? Obviously part of this is because I am nowhere near ready yet, but the idea of dating again, of starting from scratch, terrifies me. I dated quite a bit between the ages of eighteen and twenty, but the world shut down just before my twenty-first birthday and I did not date again until I met my now-ex just before my twenty-third birthday. I turn twenty-five next month, and I’ve spent the entire first half of my twenties pretty consistently not dating. Where does one meet other people when they’re not in school or working? (Side note: the job hunt is still going strong.) Are dating apps the only option, and if so, how does one use them effectively? Beyond the how of it all, that the twenties are a spectrum, people who are the same age may be in vastly different stages of life — this is quite literally the entire conceit of this blog – so how can two people line up in this way?

I’m aware that I don’t need to find the answers to these questions right this second. I’m still very much in the process of the breakup and I do not plan on dating again for quite some time, but these questions still linger, a sword of Damocles over my head that must be addressed someday. My ex and I had discussed all of the hard and important topics — triggers and trauma, marriage, religion, children, sexual exploration, ideal living locations, and more that I surely will remember after I hit publish on this post — and the idea of needing to build that foundation again someday with someone else is not only scary, it’s exhausting. The idea of opening myself up to potentially experience this heartbreak again is exhausting. 

This blog started with the hope to give a voice to the thoughts and experiences of hundreds of other twenty-somethings living through this day and age, where I could say the quiet part out loud and someone could read it and think “wow this is so true bestie.” And while that will always be the case for the things I post here, I think this time I need a little bit more. 

I need advice this time.

I need guidance. There are tons of other twenty-somethings who have had their heart broken at this stage of life and have needed to pick themselves back up and try again and again and again. As someone going through this for the first time in my twenties, how do you get the courage to do so? It feels so different from heartbreak in my teens, but is it fundamentally the same? Please share advice, tidbits, insight, anything that can be offered.

In the meantime, I will be doing newly-single hot girl shit: finishing an entire bottle of wine while sobbing to the 2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.