92 days.

Lately everyone seems to be asking me how I am. Are you doing okay? How are you feeling? What’s your emotional state?

I find the doting quite flattering, to be honest, and it’s been very sweet to see how many people do care about me, people I wouldn’t thought to have considered me a friend taking time to check in on me.

Another common thing I seem to hear alongside these check-ins are “I don’t know a Cami without Raymond.” I started seeing Raymond in October of my freshman fall.⁠01 It only just hit me at last night's blogger check-in that I literally broke the November rule despite being one of the biggest proponents of said rule, but let's not dig too deeply into that right now. And while we had our ups and downs, we started officially dating in March 2020 and had been together since then (until three days ago).

All of my college experience up until this point has been a joint venture, a co-op adventure of sorts. I don’t regret any of my time spent in the relationship; in fact, I think it was incredibly good for me to be in it. I learned so many things about myself, about who I am, about who I want to be, about who I can be. But I’m grateful that for the indefinite future I’m plunging into the unknown and seeing what it’s like to no longer have a safety net.

the good

I’m trying to navigate things on my own, like how do you make friends without relying on the same people you’ve been relying on for the past four years? How does one even go about dating in college or finding people to talk to?⁠02 Note that I plan to be single for the next however many months or years or whatever, this is more just talking about the college dating experience. What is it like to go to events single? What do I do with all this free time?

I’ve been spending a lot of time with my friends — friends from my internship last summer, friends from my sorority, friends from Twitter, friends from essentially all my various communities that I’m a part of. I hadn’t realized how large my web extended, how many people I actually do consider a friend. I think I often forget that the world is a lot bigger than my intimate ten (or so) person friend group that I spend every day with, and that it’s actually okay to branch out.

In addition to that, I’ve been picking up old hobbies again. I bought a new guitar.⁠03 Yeah I play left handed guitar please dont bully me for it I’ve been taking a freshman making seminar and learning how to rug tuft and laser cut and make stickers out of vinyl. I’ve been writing (short stories, fiction, poetry) a lot more and making videos, leaning into my hobbies a lot more.

One of the sillier benefits, I think, of going through heartbreak is also being able to reconsume old media that you couldn’t fully appreciate in the moment. I rewatched Someone Great the day of the breakup and fully cried in Hayden Library in front of everyone. I’ve been rewatching scenes from Fleabag and it seems like everything has gained a deeper meaning. Certain songs have just been hitting different like Supercut by Lorde, Eventually by Tame Impala, and About You by the 1975.

I’m still definitely sad (lol); I hope that’s, like, obvious. But I think there’s something very beautiful about the end of a relationship. I’ve never had one end positively before and this is the first one I’ve experienced where it’s amicable and it’s been a really interesting space to explore, how two people who used to be so close just unfortunately have outgrown each other and their respective needs, and coming to that mutual decision.

I think this is just the beginning of the (long, painful) growth process, but even in 48 hours after the fallout I think I’ve learned a lot already.

the bad

The loneliness is discernible to a near agonizing point. Couples on campus are just so much more visible than they used to be. The presence of merely married couples or couples that live together mocks me in some way, jeering at me, as if to rub in my face the fact that I couldn’t settle down.

My friend group, obviously, has been strained. In the breakup, we’ve agreed to “share custody” of our friend-children. I’m grateful that the breakup wasn’t nasty, that way no one has to choose sides, but it’s still difficult to just be a part of. I get nervous just thinking about it. My friendships in general have also just strained. I feel like I can’t talk to people as freely as I could before. I wonder which of his friends are still going to wave to me in the hallways. I wonder where I’m uninvited to or what people are saying behind my back.

the ugly

It’s really fucking scary. I feel like I have to occupy my mind 24/7 or else I’ll slip into a state of thinking too much, and I’m scared if I think too much, I’ll regret my decision. That really is my biggest fear, the fear that I’ve chosen wrong. That I will never find the stability and love that I found in these past three years, that I fucked up.

And so I don’t ask myself that question. I keep going, like a little machine, taking on task after task so my mind doesn’t rest enough to entertain that possibility at all.