Katy Perry is wide awake once again—and once again, she's handling it better than most people.
For all the glory heaped on other artists for the various ways they've bounced back from breakups, from their post-split social media game to their Grammy-winning albums, Perry is an unsung hero of the genre.
She and Orlando Bloom are, as the official word goes, taking "respectful, loving space" from each other after spending the better part of a year dating.
Sounds like a nightmare, poetic wording aside.
Because pain is pain, and endings are tough, even if they are mutually decided upon, as a source explained to E! News.
"Katy pulled the plug," the insider told us. "It was a few events that happened over the past few months. They both still love each other very much, though, and getting back together could happen once they have some space."
Another source revealed that, frankly, they "just were not on the same page."
Or, as this People headline put it: "Orlando Bloom Had One Foot Out the Door With Katy Perry."
Ouch!
That pretty much means the same thing as them not being on the same page, with the finger pointing a little more prominently at Bloom as being the one who wasn't interested in reading the whole book yet, but could you imagine seeing what you probably already know (by now, anyway) like that spelled out in black and white?
And the same goes for all the headlines, for that matter (not least of them Page Six's "Orlando Bloom already moving on from Katy Perry"), which Katy knows are inevitable, a consequence of her lofty status in the pop culture universe.
But for all the lessons she's learned over the years from her various relationships, including a marriage to the wrong person and an off-and-on relationship with one of the most storied Casanovas of the 21st century, she's been dealing the lessons right back as far as how to handle these bumps in the road with class, a sense of humor and plenty of heartbreak-immolating fire.
Not to mention scissors and hair dye.
By now Perry's 14-month marriage to Russell Brand is far more famous for the way that it ended than for anything romantic that occurred, including their lavish, raucous wedding week in India.
"He's a very smart man, and I was in love with him when I married him," the singer prefaced the bombshell in the July 2013 issue of Vogue. "Let's just say I haven't heard from him since he texted me saying he was divorcing me December 31, 2011."
Boom. By text, on New Year's Eve. Fare thee well, Russell Brand.
But Perry hadn't spent 2012 coyly evading the spotlight. Rocking breakup-blue hair, she gave a powerhouse debut performance of "Part of Me" at the 2012 Grammys, introducing us to the song that also served as the name of her instant-classic concert film—a documentary-style peek behind the curtain in the vein of Madonna's Truth or Dare that actually revealed far more than any fan could have hoped for (or that Perry could have predicted).
She told Vogue that she had found Brand's verbose, ribald humor "hysterical," just as so many others do, "until he started making jokes about me and he didn't know I was in the audience, because I had come to surprise him at one of his shows. So. Hysterical to a point. I mean, I have to claim my own responsibility in things. I do admit that I was on the road a lot.
"Although I invited him time and time again, and I tried to come home as much as I possibly could. You saw that in the movie. That wasn't edited to leave footage out —there wasn't any footage of him."
In the works for years, the song "Part of Me" may have initially been about her ex Travis McCoy—but it couldn't have been readier for prime time than when Perry needed it most, to serve as a well-deserved musical middle finger to the guy who broke her heart. Better yet, her song was an upbeat empowerment anthem that had everyone cheering and singing along with her.
It was a moment.
"At first when I met [Brand], he wanted an equal," she also told Vogue, "and I think a lot of times strong men do want an equal, but then they get that equal and they're like, I can't handle the equalness. He didn't like the atmosphere of me being the boss on tour. So that was really hurtful, and it was very controlling, which was upsetting. I felt a lot of responsibility for it ending, but then I found out the real truth, which I can't necessarily disclose because I keep it locked in my safe for a rainy day.
"I let go and I was like: This isn't because of me; this is beyond me. So I have moved on from that."
Translation: It wasn't me, it was him, I couldn't do anything about it, I never would've been able to have done anything about it even if I'd known ahead of time, and I eventually got it.
Words to live by. By the time of the Vogue interview, Perry had already dated and split up once from John Mayer (of Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Aniston and Taylor Swift fame as well as the whole platinum-selling singer-songwriter thing) and would go on to reunite and disengage from him a few more times before seemingly calling it quits for good not long before she and Bloom hit it off.
"I still am madly in love with him," she said about Mayer. "All I can say about that relationship is that he's got a beautiful mind...Beautiful mind, tortured soul. I do have to figure out why I am attracted to these broken birds."
Self-awareness is also key.
She released Prism in October 2013. The vestiges of her relationship with Brand wound up in songs like "Ghost" (You sent a text / It's like the wind changed your mind) and "By the Grace of God" (We were living on a fault line and I felt the fault was all mine), and before that she had exorcised the demons with the powerhouse summer tune "Roar," her eighth consecutive No. 1 single.
She also recorded "Who You Love" with Mayer, which ended up on his 2013 album Paradise Valley.
They broke up in February 2014—toward the start of what would be yet another full-steam-ahead year for Perry. She headed out on her Prismatic World Tour, spent some as yet still-undefined time with Diplo (the rumors leaned toward romantic, but they didn't look particularly serious), turned 30 and—feather in her cap alert!—scored the 2015 Super Bowl Halftime Show headliner spot, which as we all know now was the stuff memes are made of.
Perry also bravely opened up about battling depression after her divorce from Brand, acknowledging that "there were thoughts" of hurting herself, "but there were never actions, thankfully."
Meanwhile, she and Mayer got back together.
"I don't like to live in fear because that traps you and your voices. Fear is a control tactic in the world that is negative and depressing and I don't want to be associated with it," Perry reflected to Australia's Daily Telegraph, in May 2015. "I'm excited by whatever it brings. I'm excited by own evolution."
She also revealed that she and Brand still hadn't spoken since that text message. "I don't want to talk about him," she told the paper. "My songs will say what I need to say."
Oh, blessed confirmation!
Perry also said that, as far as her relationship with Mayer went, she was "excited by whatever it brings. I'm excited by my own evolution.
"I don't want to end up bittersweet," she added. "I have to evolve, I have to continue to push people's perceptions of me. As an artist I like to do that, keep people on the edge of their seats."
Perry and Mayer were on the outs again by July 2015, their tendency to get back together still not proving to be a sign that they were meant to be. They never fully lost contact, though, and were still hanging out all the way up until (and after) the 2016 Golden Globes, where Perry and Bloom were the big takeaway from the after-party circuit.
Ploom took off like wildfire (what, no good?), and obviously got quite close, jaunting to Hawaii and Paris, Sardinia and Wyoming, Burning Man and the Democratic National Convention.
But now they're taking a break, both knowing it's a good idea because Bloom, who's also dad to 6-year-old son Flynn with ex-wife Miranda Kerr, reportedly "didn't want to be tied down."
And perhaps Perry didn't either—she's already having quite a year, after all. Powerful Grammys performance, check. New album coming out soon, check.
Then, there'll be more singles on the radio, another tour, probably some more political activism... The men may as well start eating their hearts out now.
Her post-split hairdo already in place, Perry dispensed some nuggets of wisdom inspired by this fork in her journey last night, tweeting, "How bout a new way of thinking for 2017. U can still b friends & love ur former partners! No one's a victim or a villain, get a life y'all!"
Perry doesn't have to be raw all the time. Sassy, breezy and yet still wise and real also does the trick.