A year ago today, I left my apartment for the first time in two weeks.
I’d been sick with the flu, but honestly, that wasn’t the real illness. The real problem was that I’d spent the better part of a month drinking mezcal like it was medicine and trying not to think about all the ways heartbreak rearranges a person. By then, my apartment smelled faintly of eucalyptus, takeout containers, and self-destruction. It was 6 p.m., that strange hour when summer light starts turning gold and heavy. I remember staring at the ceiling and thinking: you have to become a person again eventually.
So I changed out of one set of pajamas and into another, stepped into a pair of ballet flats that had long since given up on supporting me, and walked down Montrose toward Beyond Natural Market looking like a woman recently exhumed. I was half-listening to my mother on the phone when I saw him.
The French guy.
The one I’d started seeing because I thought maybe he could distract me from my ex. Or help me get over him. Instead, he’d become his own separate problem — another man capable of making me feel insane in slightly more sophisticated ways.
He was sitting outside a bar a block from my apartment with another girl.
I don’t even remember what she looked like exactly — only that she seemed light in a way I no longer felt. Laughing easily. Leaning forward. Entirely unaware that she’d been cast as a minor character in the psychological collapse of a stranger.
I stopped walking so abruptly I almost lost my balance. Then I did what any emotionally stable woman would do: hung up on my mother mid-sentence, crouched behind a parked car, and called Emma.
There are some friends you call for advice. Emma was the kind you call when your life turns cinematic against your will.
Five minutes later she was in a cab heading to Williamsburg and I was back in my apartment trying to pull myself together fast enough to pretend I still had dignity. I showered, threw on a sheer cashmere dress, rubbed concealer under my eyes, reapplied lipstick with shaky hands. The whole thing felt humiliating immediately, but not going felt worse.
We walked into the bar pretending we hadn’t come for exactly one reason.
Ordered mezcal. Sat too casually. Acted like girls who had somewhere better to be after this.
Then he saw me.
I watched his face change instantly. That tiny moment of panic people can’t hide no matter how composed they think they are. He stood up too fast, came over smiling, kissing me hello like this was all perfectly normal.
“You look amazing,” he kept saying.
Over and over.
Like if he said it enough times maybe it would blur the reality of what was happening.
He introduced me to the girl, who looked deeply uncomfortable in the way only innocent bystanders in someone else’s emotional mess can look. Then he told me he’d text me later.
Which somehow felt worse than if he’d said nothing at all.
Emma and I made it around the corner before we started laughing. Not real laughter. The kind that comes out sharp and exhausted when something hurts too much to process in real time.
We stayed out for a few more drinks, and somewhere in the middle of me talking too loudly and pretending to be detached, the feeling hit me again. Not jealousy exactly. Just emptiness.
Because the truth was, none of this was really about him.
He was just the latest person I’d handed my self-worth to while trying not to feel the damage my ex left behind. And the worst part was knowing I could see the pattern while still participating in it. Going for men who felt unavailable enough to keep me anxious but interested. Men who blurred sincerity and performance so completely you started questioning your own instincts.
By the time I got on the L train, I felt completely hollowed out.
I cried quietly the whole ride home Not because I wanted either of them back. I didn’t. It was more the realization that somewhere along the way, I had stopped liking myself very much.
Stopped trusting myself too.
The next morning, I woke up weirdly clear-headed. No fever. No hangover. Just this cold sort of awareness.
I got dressed and went to work. Helped women into wedding gowns. Smiled. Took photos. Posted things online that made my life look softer and prettier than it felt. Everyone around me seemed to be performing some polished version of happiness — relationships, engagement rings, carefully curated love stories — while I felt like I was standing just outside of it all, watching it happen through glass.
And I think that was the first time I realized heartbreak isn’t always about losing another person.
Sometimes it’s realizing how much of yourself you abandoned trying to be loved correctly by the wrong people.