I remember listening to Lorde’s song “Supercut” on loop while walking alone through Dubrovnik’s Stari Grad in 2017, on my family’s last full day in Croatia. It was the European summer after my European breakup — a summer I expected to be elsewhere, living a different life. A summer I expected to spend with my lover, bathing in sound, sweat, and strobe lights within the concrete walls of Berlin’s nightclubs; not bathing in the salt of the Adriatic, basking in sunshine, listening to pop music, by myself.

At that point in time, I’d gone fully no contact with the boy who should have stayed the previous summer’s summer fling instead of becoming my boyfriend. We’d made the mistake of trying to make it work across oceans, thinking our fledgling connection was so strong and so special that it could make the distance, just to discover half a year later that our magic was limited — only capable of existing in the same space, in the same time.

In hindsight, it was laughably naïve, almost sweet. There is something to be said about really falling head over heels in love for the first time in your life. At least it was for me.