I was in the closet for the first 21 years of my life and I was relatively happy spending time alone. I enjoyed reading, writing, watching movies, etc and I was never really consciously lonely and never really thought much about dating.

Then, I met someone in college on a hookup app and he pursued a relationship, I surprised myself by being open to it and started having feelings for him and then he suddenly broke it off a couple months later without a real reason. (We never fought or anything). Those were the happiest two months of my life. It was all so quick and so unexpected. A few weeks after we broke up he stopped responding to my texts and would ignore me if I bumped into him on campus. It hurt a lot.

But the thing is, that was almost two years ago. And I haven't met anyone else since despite trying pretty hard to date again. And I've now decided that I need to stop trying to date. I need to work on myself and recover an appreciation for being alone and try to enjoy the things I used to enjoy again. I'm not bitter about the experience, it really opened me up and made me a more empathetic person. But damn. The sadness and loneliness is a lot to handle, especially when everyone else seems to be in a happy relationship. I don't want to numb my feelings, but I need to figure out how to be at peace with being alone again and not let the sadness overtake me. Any tips?