When I was first assigned to write about Meghan Markle’s new As Ever holiday collection, I didn’t quite know what to do with it all. I’d already written about making the Epsom salts from With Love, Meghan back in March (to such effect, I might add, that an acquaintance at a party gushingly told me: “I didn’t know you were funny!”), and the fatigue I felt at the very idea of making mulled wine—which, it turns out, can be done with white or rose or even champagne!—made me wonder if my best blogging days were behind me.

But nature always provides—whether it’s berries for hikers lost in the woods or plot-thickening circumstances for writers worried about an organic-feeling product tie-in. The three bottles of wine, various jams and honeys, two (two!) scented candles, and edible flower petals landed on my doorstep on a Thursday, and early on Friday morning, my partner of nearly four years and I came to the unexpected and heartbreaking—yet mutual and surprisingly right-feeling—decision to end our relationship.

I don’t know how other people process a major split (with crying? CrossFit? Scrolling through the apps until your eyes blur?), but the answer for Rax and me was clear, bubbly, and lying in wait in our fridge. Together, we popped a bottle of Meghan Markle-brand 2021 Vintage Napa Valley Brut, filled our glasses—mine to the brim, his with a side of weed vape—and toasted to what we can both honestly call the best four years of our lives (so far).

It actually tracks that something like Markle’s As Ever collection would figure so prominently in our breakup: my relationship with Rax has always been anchored by luxury—or the pursuit of it, anyway. There is nothing that we loved more as a couple than “scamming,” whether that meant flexing our (admittedly limited) queer-Angeleno clout for the occasional free carabiner, or gratis samples of cologne (he proudly refers to himself as a Scents Boy), or a comped night’s stay at a luxury hotel.

Obviously, the presence of As Ever in our apartment was no pure scam; I’d always planned to write about it. What I couldn’t have imagined was that the candles in the mailer—pleasantly redolent of “Moroccan Mint, Cardamom, and Tea Leaves” and “Water Lotus, Sandalwood, and California Poppy,” respectively—would flicker away as we each took the day off work, joyfully canceled that afternoon’s couples’ therapy session (a fringe benefit of breaking up: you simply don’t have to do that shit anymore!), and began breaking the sad news to our best friends. Perhaps the hardest part of Friday’s proceedings was informing our dog, a cuddly but naughty Maltipoo rescue named Franklin, that he would have two Christmases this year: one with Daddy in Orange County, and one with Mommy on New York’s Upper West Side. (In the end, Franklin bore the news gracefully, especially when we handed him one of his prized bully sticks and told him to simply go to town.)

I then took the two remaining bottles of As Ever-branded wine to a series of Halloween parties, got comically drunk, and derangedly hit on straight people who had absolutely no interest in me (which, my best friend pointed out later, was likely my higher self’s way of protecting me from a premature rebound).

While I can’t say that it feels good to be single again just yet, when I picture myself in the only-medium-sad studio apartment that I hope to move into—sipping my As Ever wine in the bath and burning an As Ever candle while As Ever jam waits in the fridge to be mixed into yogurt for a silly little bedtime treat—I feel like I can do it. After all, who knows more about making a hard life pivot than Meghan Markle herself?