Five days out from a holiday to Thailand, a holiday I had been incredibly excited about, I found myself unexpectedly single.

To an outsider, this might have sounded like perfect timing: a chance to sip margaritas by the pool until I forgot his name, distract myself with tourist activities, and live my best life (while also posting some thirst traps on Instagram to make him miss me).

But the thought of spending five days alone in another country made me so flipping depressed.

“This will be so good for you!” my friends chirped. “It’s exactly the distraction you need.”

In reality, I couldn’t think of anything worse.

In those raw early days, all I wanted was to wallow in bed, cry to my friends, and mourn the loss of a three-and-a-half-year relationship. I had poured so much time, energy, and sacrifice into us. I had moved across the world for him and I truly envisioned a future with this person.

Instead, I was looking down the barrel of singledom on the verge of 30, while it felt like everyone else around me was getting engaged, buying houses, and having babies.

Still, despite not even wanting to get out of bed in the morning, I knew I was going. For one, my flights weren’t refundable, and secondly, I knew deep, deep down, I needed to.

Five fresh days in, I was still crying a lot. But nothing, truly nothing, prepares you for nine hours of uninterrupted time without the internet, or any distractions besides a couple of downloaded Netflix shows on a budget Jetstar flight, to just feel your feelings.

Those nine hours stretched into what felt like fifty. The entire flight, I wanted to sob as I replayed all our amazing memories, spiralling into the certainty that I would never find love again and convincing myself I was destined to buy a cat (or twenty), despite the fact that I don’t even like cats.

Not wanting to alarm the sweet 50-year-old man who made polite small talk as we ate our respective lunches, I’d go into the bathroom and sob.

I was alone, and I didn’t want to be.

There was no one to text me to see if I landed safely (besides my mum), and I felt even more lonely knowing he no longer cared if I made it to my hotel safely. I spent the first night crying myself to sleep, but what came from the trip was a fast track to healing.

I took a cooking class, I visited an elephant sanctuary, and I fell into one of those fast, wonderful holiday friendships with an Irish girl.

We drank cold beers into the sticky evening, watching the chaotic blur of a busy market street in Phuket. It was the first time I went hours without remembering my own heartbreak.

I still religiously called my friends back home. I still cried every day, but I started to realise I could be on my own again. Life was exciting and beautiful, and it didn’t have to look like what I thought 30 would be.

When my childhood best friend arrived, I felt like the universe had orchestrated this trip with weird, wonderful timing. Sipping strong piña coladas by the pool each evening (a ritual I would deeply miss once I returned to daily life) we pulled the breakup apart.

We dissected the things that hadn’t worked and why it needed to happen, agreeing that it was okay to miss him while knowing it was the right decision. I was so frightened of what the future looked like, but I was coming to accept that life was simply going to be different.

I slowly confronted the bad parts. I understood them, I wrote about them, I finally let myself get angry. I also allowed myself to forget and be present in this exciting world.

On our second-to-last day, we took a boat to an island called Koh Phangan and saw a psychic who let us shuffle tarot cards on a beach and read our birth charts. We were both openly wondering if we were ever going to find our person, so the psychic performed a chant that allegedly summons your future husband… it mainly involved him loudly clashing cymbals over our heads and humming.

Yes, it was incredibly woo-woo, but strangely, it gave me the hope I needed to believe everything would work out in the end. We all heal in different ways, and a bit of spirituality felt like something I needed.

The movie Eat, Pray, Love insists that a holiday can heal a broken heart, and I am here to tell you it’s entirely right.

If you’re newly single and wallowing in the absolute pits of grief, my heart goes out to you. Heartbreak is the most isolating kind of pain, it is grief and it is loss. But if you have the means to book that trip, I urge you to just do it.

Those two weeks healed me in so many ways. Most importantly, the trip made me realise how incredibly lucky I am to have other beautiful relationships in my life, friends who have loved me fiercely through every single season.

We place so much weight on the importance of romantic love, but it is platonic love that has always been the buoy keeping my head above water in the darkest times. At the risk of sounding like a complete cliché, the reality is that you truly do not need a man. You can be absolutely brimming with love from your friends and family, and it was this breakup that helped me see that now.

I still have days when I ache for the relationship, but two months later and 30, I am finally starting to feel like myself again. I am happy and I am healing.