Why healing isn't linear: my breakup recovery rollercoaster

It’s been three months since my breakup. That’s twelve weeks, 90 days, and 2,190 hours of heartache and healing. 

To mark the occasion, I’ve decided to give you a glimpse inside my post-breakup brain. If you, like me, are prone to should-ing all over yourself - that is to say, you think you should be happier/less snotty/over it by now - then I hope this insight into my own experience goes some way towards solidifying the sentiment you’re probably tired of hearing by now. Healing isn’t linear.

Flip-flopping from misery to gratitude, despair to hope, loneliness to joy all in the space of a single day was and still is par for the course. My breakup has felt about as unruly and unpredictable as a rollercoaster ride though with fewer thrills, lots less fun, and no operator to throw on the brakes when I've had enough. Multiple and conflicting forces coexist and, even when it feels like my body can’t possibly withstand any more Gs, there comes another loop-the-loop. It’s exhausting, to tell you the truth.

But then something funny starts to happen. You realise it’s been a whole hour since you thought of them. Perhaps you let out a laugh or found yourself grinning at a TikTok of a dog wearing a hat. Maybe you even made it through a whole conversation without getting distracted (was that person over there wearing the same brand of aftershave as my ex and ohmygod I miss him so much and maybe I should call him and wait, what was my friend saying? Crap, I better just smile and nod.)

A sojourn into the soul: what no one tells you about long-term travel

Last autumn, before I left for my trip, my heart felt so full of joy that I thought it might burst. Like a stuffed piñata, it was swelling and spinning, and I wanted to spread handfuls of its neon, glittering confetti-filling around. Because everyone should get to feel like that.

I hadn't even boarded the plane, yet I already felt like a success. That's the thing about following your heart: once you give yourself permission to stop getting in your own way, each tiny step that you take in the direction of your dreams feels like a monumental achievement.

Morning hikes and mountain dogs in Ella, Sri Lanka

Invigorated, energised, and lit up from within, you become an unstoppable force. New ideas, new perspectives, and new connections stick to you like glue. You’re a snowball of energy, gaining size and momentum with each fresh stride forwards.

Everything in your life takes on a new, richer, silkier quality. Colours look brighter. Sounds feel fuller. Smells seem sweeter.

And as I prepared to set off on my journey into the unknown, I couldn't help but feel that it was the start of an epic love story. But instead of a tale about a boy and a girl, it was about a girl and the world. And this was one romance that I was sure wasn't about to fizzle out anytime soon.

But to say it wasn't a rocky relationship would be a lie. The truth is, my five months in Asia were nothing like I thought they'd be.

It's time for change: why I've quit my life to travel

I’ll never forget the first moment that I realised something in my life needed to change.

I was in New York City with my childhood best friend. It was a whirlwind of sight-seeing, basketball game-watching, fried food-eating, fancy dress-partying, swanky restaurant-dining, leafy park-strolling, and so-bad-they’re-good Halloween decoration-viewing.

One evening, as we sat sipping on our elaborately named and overpriced cocktails in a dimly-lit basement bar, I found myself admitting loudly over the thump-thwack of the music: “When I’m home, I’m not ever really living.”