Breakup 101: forced to move on

on friendship breakups, situationships, growing pains, and learning to live with the people we used to be.

There is something about losing people that nobody really prepares you for. And I’m not just talking about romantic relationships. Friendship breakups deserve their own category of heartbreak because, honestly, sometimes losing a best friend can feel just as devastating as losing someone you were romantically involved with.

At 24, I’m beginning to realize that growing up is essentially a continuous cycle of meeting people, getting attached, learning lessons, and eventually figuring out when it’s time to let certain people go. And the older I get, the more complicated that process seems to become.

I think one of the hardest things about growing up during this generation is finding people who genuinely understand how you love, how you communicate, and how you need to be loved in return. Everybody wants connection, but not everybody knows how to maintain one. We live in a time where conversations are disposable, friendships are sometimes treated as temporary conveniences, and people can disappear from your life just as easily as they entered it.

And maybe that’s why I’ve become a little indifferent toward making new friendships.

I’ve lowkey given up on friendships altogether. Not in the sense that I’m completely closed off to meeting new people, but I’ve reached a point where I’m no longer actively searching for something that should happen naturally. If the right people come into my life, they come. If they don’t, I guess that’s life.

But if I’m being completely honest, I miss having a best friend.

Not just somebody to send TikToks to or make weekend plans with. I mean a REAL best friend. I do have a best friend though shes my cousin but more like a sister. We’re long distance besties so it’s been hard honestly. It’s like I crave a soulmate-type connection something kinda like what me and her share but we actually hang out in person too lmao. Someone who knows the little details about you, remembers things you mentioned three months ago, understands your silence, and makes the everyday parts of life feel a little less ordinary. 

I crave that kind of friendship. Something deeper than surface-level conversations and occasional check-ins. A person who feels like home, someone you can experience life alongside, someone who genuinely wants to be involved in the little details of your everyday existence.

I want the kind of friendship where you don’t have to question whether you’re wanted.

And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting that. I think sometimes we convince ourselves that we’re asking for too much when, really, we’re just asking for something genuine.

the situationship epidemic

Now, let’s talk about romantic relationships.

If there’s one thing I could go back and tell my younger self, it would probably be to stop taking every relationship so seriously.

LMFAO. Easier said than done, obviously.

Relationships I experienced between the ages of 14 and 18 genuinely shaped so much of how I approached love, attachment, communication, and even my own self-worth as I got older. When you’re that young, everything feels permanent. Your first heartbreak feels like the end of your entire world. Your first love feels like something that could never possibly be replicated.

And your parents were probably right when they told you not to rush into dating at a young age because, whew, some of those experiences will have you doing emotional renovations well into adulthood.

I don’t necessarily regret those relationships because they were part of my life, but I can recognize how much they influenced me.

I think there’s a difference between growing up with someone and growing through something with someone. Sometimes you meet people at an age when neither of you really understands yourselves yet. You’re both figuring out what love looks like, what boundaries are, how to communicate, and what it means to be emotionally available.

And sometimes you end up learning those lessons the hard way.

Then there’s the situationship era.

A particularly confusing chapter of modern dating where two people can share emotional intimacy, spend time together, build routines, create memories, and essentially experience the responsibilities of a relationship without ever establishing what they actually are.

It’s a strange place to exist emotionally because you’re attached to something that doesn’t necessarily have a name, a direction, or a promise.

You can spend so much time trying to understand another person’s intentions that you eventually lose sight of your own.

I’ve learned that ambiguity can be exhausting. Constantly wondering where you stand with somebody, trying to interpret communication, or convincing yourself that things might eventually become what you want them to be can take up so much emotional space.

And at some point, you have to ask yourself whether you’re holding onto the person or the possibility of who they could be.

Sometimes moving on means accepting that the potential was never the reality.

emotionally unavailable or just emotionally exhausted?

Something I’ve noticed about myself as I’ve gotten older is that certain experiences have made me more guarded.

I’m still a very empathetic person. I care deeply, sometimes probably more than I should, and I have always valued emotional connection. But I also recognize that I’m not the same person I was when I first started navigating relationships.

There are areas of my life where I’ve become more avoidant. Things that I might have approached with complete openness years ago now come with hesitation. I think twice before getting attached. I question people’s intentions. I sometimes find myself emotionally preparing for disappointment before anything has even happened.

And that’s something I’ve been trying to understand about myself.

When you’ve experienced enough disappointment, it’s easy to start confusing emotional protection with emotional independence. You tell yourself you don’t need anybody, that you’re perfectly fine doing everything alone, and that getting attached isn’t worth the potential complications.

But there’s a difference between enjoying your own company and convincing yourself that you don’t need meaningful connections.

I don’t want past experiences to make me incapable of appreciating new ones.

I don’t want to become so comfortable with emotional distance that I forget how to let people in. I also don’t want to keep giving people access to parts of me that they haven’t demonstrated they can respect.

There’s a balance somewhere between having an open heart and having boundaries. I’m still figuring out where that balance exists.

you are not your heartbreak

Here’s something I’ve been trying to remind myself:

The people who have hurt you do not get to define who you become.

The friendships that ended, the relationships that didn’t work out, the situationships that left you questioning everything, and the people who couldn’t meet you where you were emotionally — none of those experiences have to become your identity.

They can influence you without owning you.

I think that’s an important distinction, especially when you’re transitioning from your teenage years into adulthood. We spend so much time looking back at the people we used to be, wondering why we tolerated certain things, why we stayed longer than we should have, or why we allowed certain situations to affect us so deeply.

But we were younger. We were learning.

And while those experiences may have contributed to our fears, expectations, communication styles, and understanding of love, they don’t determine the kind of person we’re allowed to become.

You can learn to communicate differently. You can become more intentional about the friendships you maintain. You can establish healthier boundaries. You can experience love without constantly comparing it to what happened before.

You can miss someone and still understand why they’re no longer part of your life.

You can wish things had turned out differently without wanting to go back.

And you can acknowledge that something affected you deeply without allowing it to dictate every relationship that comes afterward.

forced to move on, but not forced to forget.

I guess that’s what this entire chapter of adulthood has been teaching me.

Moving on doesn’t always look like suddenly being okay. Sometimes it looks like no longer checking for someone. Sometimes it means accepting that a friendship has run its course. Sometimes it means finally admitting that a relationship wasn’t what you needed it to be, even if you wanted it to work more than anything.

And sometimes it means being comfortable with the possibility that the connections you crave haven’t found their way to you yet.

I still want the best-friend experience. I still believe in soulmate friendships, meaningful relationships, spontaneous conversations, and having people who make life feel a little more special. I haven’t completely given up on any of those things.

I’m just no longer interested in forcing them.

At 24, I’m learning that not every person you meet is supposed to stay, not every connection is meant to become something permanent, and not every ending needs to be treated like a personal failure.

The people we meet along the way can leave little pieces of themselves in our memories, our habits, and the lessons we carry forward. But eventually, we have to make room for the person we’re becoming.

Maybe growing up isn’t about becoming someone who never gets hurt again.

Maybe it’s about becoming someone who knows how to keep living, loving, and experiencing life even after certain chapters come to an end.

And if there’s one thing I’m taking with me into this next chapter, it’s that I refuse to let the people I lost convince me that the connections I’m still waiting for don’t exist.

Here’s to the friendships we outgrew, the relationships that taught us lessons we didn’t ask for, the situationships we should’ve left in the drafts, and the versions of ourselves we’re still getting to know.

forced to move on, not forced to stop believing in connection.

— Rain ♡

The Thought Daughter

For the girls who have a million thoughts and no idea how to explain a single one.

I think there is a very specific kind of girl who grows up feeling like she has an entire inner world that nobody else can quite see. Maybe she’s the oldest daughter. Maybe she’s the only girl. Maybe she’s just always been the one who notices things a little too much.

She notices when someone’s tone changes. She remembers things people said years ago. She can spend an entire night thinking about one conversation that lasted five minutes. She feels something deeply, but when someone asks her why, suddenly she doesn’t have the words.

And eventually, she finds them somewhere else. In a book. In a movie. In a song. In a character. That’s what I think a thought daughter really is.

The term has become this funny little internet archetype for the girl who thinks too much, feels too much, romanticizes everything, and probably has a Notes app full of thoughts she would never actually say out loud. And while I love the humor behind it, I’ve been thinking about how much truth there actually is underneath the joke. Because sometimes being a thought daughter isn’t really about being an overthinker. Sometimes it’s about growing up with so much to feel and nowhere to put it.

For me, there’s something about growing up as the only girl in a household that makes you very aware of yourself. You’re learning how to understand your emotions while simultaneously trying to figure out how to explain them to everyone else. And when you don’t know how to communicate something, you start looking for other ways to say it.

That’s where the books come in. The movies. The music. The writing. The characters you become weirdly attached to because somehow they are saying everything you’ve been trying to say yourself.

I’ve always found it interesting how many characters fit into this exact archetype. Katniss. Nancy Wheeler. Fiona Gallagher. Anthony Bridgerton. They all exist in completely different worlds, but there’s something familiar about the way they carry themselves. They’re observant. They’re responsible. They’re constantly thinking about everyone around them. They don’t always know how to communicate what they’re feeling, but you can practically see the wheels turning in their heads.

And maybe that’s why we love them so much.

Sometimes it’s easier to understand yourself through somebody fictional.

A thought daughter might not know how to say I’m overwhelmed, but she can spend three hours watching a movie about someone who feels exactly the same way. She might not know how to explain why she’s sad, but she can listen to the same song twenty times because somehow the lyrics understand her better than she understands herself. She might not know what she’s feeling at all, so she reads about someone else’s feelings until something finally clicks.

I think there’s also a misconception that girls who are like this are simply dramatic or too emotional. But a lot of the time, we’re actually incredibly functional.We go to school. We go to work. We answer the texts. We show up for our friends. We make jokes. We get dressed. We create things. We keep moving.And meanwhile, there can be an entire universe happening internally that nobody knows about.

That’s the part of the thought-daughter archetype that interests me most: the contrast between how much someone is carrying and how normal they can look while carrying it. And I don’t think every thought daughter is depressed, anxious, or struggling with their mental health. But I do think a lot of deeply introspective people know what it’s like to function through things that they haven’t quite figured out how to articulate yet.

Maybe that’s why so many thought daughters are drawn to art. We’re constantly trying to translate ourselves.

Into playlists. Into outfits. Into journal entries. Into movies. Into Pinterest boards. Into paragraphs that we’ll probably never show anyone. Into fictional characters who somehow become mirrors.

There’s something beautiful about that, honestly. Because maybe being a thought daughter isn’t something we need to grow out of. Maybe it’s just learning how to give all those thoughts somewhere to go. And maybe that’s why I wanted to write about this in the first place.

I recently made a TikTok about the term “thought daughter,” and the more I thought about it, the more I realized how much the joke actually describes a certain kind of girl I’ve known my entire life. The girl who is always thinking. Always observing. Always feeling. Always trying to make sense of things. The girl who can turn a completely ordinary Tuesday into a full philosophical crisis. The girl who falls in love with stories because sometimes fiction gives her the vocabulary that real life doesn’t. Maybe that’s the thought daughter.

Not necessarily the girl who has all the answers.

The girl who has all the questions.

And maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Because someone has to notice everything. 

Someone has to romanticize the little things. 

Someone has to remember.

Someone has to ask why.

Maybe we’re not “thinking too much.”

Maybe we’re just learning how to understand ourselves.