We were all students of a small music program at a private college, which meant that I was the last person to know. I stepped offstage from a violin recital and checked my phone on the way to the reception where my colleagues and parents were waiting. My friend had sent me pictures of her with my boyfriend on a recent camping trip. I thought back to the previous week, my boyfriend lacing up his hiking boots, telling me how excited he was to take our future children camping together one day. And now, on my screen, the reality of his trip: two of the people I had loved and trusted more than any others, kissing beneath the bright hot sun.

In the following days, friends, acquaintances, and even professors came forward. Everyone, it seemed, had seen them at the library together, heads bent too close, or with their hands grasped too tightly in a practice room, his car parked on her street on successive nights. I was gutted, not only by the private violation, but by how public it all turned out to be.

I left the apartment I shared with my boyfriend, moving in with some people I knew only peripherally. He moved out, too—into the apartment he had kept in secret. But it wasn’t enough. I felt an ongoing and deep sense of embarrassment. I have a memory of retrieving my violin from my locker and overhearing friends discuss the situation; it was old news to them. I started avoiding campus and stopped interacting with most of my friends, feeling like I couldn’t trust anyone. I began to drink excessively and visit strip clubs—very out of character for me. I wanted to leave my body, enter the body of someone this wouldn’t have happened to.

A week later, I was surprised by how easy it felt to forgive him. I gave him his mail, and felt no ill will. I suppose I had been socialized to expect this kind of betrayal from a man. But the betrayal at the hands of one of my closest friends was something I was wholly unprepared for: the grief, the inability to understand, and the slow and horrifying realization that I still loved her.

I had just finished reading the Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante, and Ferrante’s depiction of a world created and run by men, but also rejected by women inspired me: What if I didn’t allow the world to pit us against each other? What if I didn’t have to lose her?