There I was — cross-legged on kitchen tiles, spooning Nutella from the jar, sipping cab sauv from the bottle, sobbing to my mother and bewailing my inevitable spinsterhood. “I’m going to die alone!” I cried.

The cat turned in my direction with a look that said, “How gauche.” Even my own mother—giver of life, from whose womb I sprung forth—was laughing at me.

My very first boyfriend and I had called it quits that morning. When Sheryl Crow sang, “The first cut is the deepest,” she was on to something. (Yeah yeah, I know it’s really a Cat Stevens ditty, but the fact that I only wanted to hear Miss Crow’s gaudy version is indicative of the state I was in). I ain’t ashamed to admit he also happened to be my very first boyfriend at the ripe old age of 25, so you’ll have to forgive the dramatics.

Alas, my relationship with He Who Must Not Be Named was doomed from inception. He being an American citizen, we were divided by differences that proved much greater than simply dropping the letter ‘u’ from words, or referring to Timbits as “doughnut holes.”

When we first met, at a wedding in New York City (my best friend from university wed his brother at an intimate ceremony in Central Park), I knew. Or at least, I thought I did.

He, a writer, charming and witty, was the first man to challenge my untameable ardor and genuinely pique my curiosity. The first half of my twenties had been spent casually dating, churning out little of substance.

After returning to our respective homes – I to Toronto, and he to Ann Arbor, Michigan – we kept in touch. But our affair, in the end, amounted to little more than eternal Greyhound bus trips chaperoned by border guards.

Take, for instance, our first official date, which was spent detained at the Detroit-Windsor border. The mood was set with an ambience of buzzing fluorescent tube lights; we were serenaded by the muttering of agents rummaging through luggage, punctuated by indiscernible alien-language susurrations and mewling toddlers. How utterly unromantic.

According to Canadian immigration laws, an American citizen can visit for six months at a time, provided they do not work, and will then be forced to return to the U.S. Six months after that, they can come back for another six-month stint, forced to lead a fractured and volatile life until applying for permanent citizenship. Knowledge of this strained not only our meetings but our wallets–planes, trains and automobiles are wont to become a burden unsustainable for a penniless pair of writers such as we were.

We were fated to such weekend visits—the compartmentalization of togetherness and parcelling out of our affections.

Though back  there, on the cold floor of the Detroit-Windsor border hovel, I was blind to all of this behind rose-coloured glasses. Perhaps a lifetime spent watching Nora Ephron’s films warped my views on what love and a (functional) relationship should look like. No matter how much I might want him to, my proverbial Tom Hanks was not going to sweep me off my feet with a grand romantic gesture at an independent bookstore–let alone an immigration office. That which is meant to last, does. That which is not? Well…

Back in my kitchen, I carefully set the spoon down (but, er, not the wine), stand up, and take a good long look at myself. Literally and figuratively. Salt-streaked tear-stained cheeks and bubbling snot. Get a grip, I tell the puffy-eyed girl in the mirror.

I remind myself who I am: a chest-beating feminist who trumpets the I-don’t-need-no-man-to-be-successful mantra à la Fey and Poehler. That I’ve always put saving the world one story at a time ahead of finding the so-called “One” and settling down on my life’s To Do. Cue “Independent Women” by Destiny’s Child. This would be fine. I’d forget him in no time. I couldn’t feel anything when Beyonce sang that loud.

But I soon came to understand that numbing a broken heart was not the answer, either. So I decided to indulge in the pain and longing and despair, and dare I say, even took pleasure in it. If I felt like crying, I cried. If I felt like holing up under blankets with Sylvia Plath, you wouldn’t hear from me all weekend. Ditto goes for projecting my ex’s face on to the punching bag at combat class. Melancholia was a harbinger of clarity.

To experience love and loss for the first time connected me to humanity on another level. Finally, I was inducted into this secret club from which I had previously been left out. No longer was mine a pseudo-heart à la the one given to the Tin Man, and I had my American beau to thank for that. As Kurt Vonnegut said of spring, I was unlocking, and ready to accept the next affair de coeur. Look out, Tom Hanks.