A breakup feels like the end of the world. Usually it’s the end of one map and the start of a better one.

The intensity is not an exaggeration; a relationship is a whole set of assumptions about how the next several years were going to go, and losing it means losing the map rather than just the person. That is genuinely disorienting, and disorientation is easy to mistake for ruin. What has ended is a plan, not your capacity to make another.

Give it time before you draw conclusions about yourself. Keep the ordinary structure going, eat, sleep, see people, even when none of it helps much. The new map gets drawn slowly, and not on a schedule you choose.