If you’re able to truly lose yourself in your books or some other solitary pasttime, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that either. Going out and socializing is not essential if that’s not something that would appeal to you in general. For me, there’s nothing like heading to a book (or, better yet, series of books) I really love to escape from whatever aspect of reality that has me seriously bummed. Interestingly, thinking about “things” (i.e. the relationship itself), in my experience, doesn’t help one damn bit. But if you can “go away” by means of a book, or a really good computer game, or movies, or whatever it is you really enjoy doing, it’s amazing how the healing process will go on without your attention.
In fact, I’d do my best to avoid talking about it to your friends in any detail as well. By all means, inform them of the bare facts, but if you spend a lot of time talking about it, you’re spending a lot of time thinking about it. I know that conventional wisdom often says you have to do this to get through a mourning period, but, at least for me, that’s not the case.
You may or may not look back at this in ten or fifteen years with some nostalgic regret. But it won’t hurt unless you’ve allowed it to become the center of your life and decided that you can’t possibly be happy without this particular girl. That’s almost certainly untrue; it’s amazing how many people there are out there, and how many of them are worthy of your time, attention, respect, liking, and even love. You may never find a girl exactly like this one again - in fact, you almost certainly won’t. But the chances are, unless you decide that you can not be happy without her, you can find girls who are every bit as lovable as this one has been (and still is), just in different ways. In some ways, those girls won’t be as good as this one was. But in others (and just think about this), they’ll be better.
It’s a myth that there is one true soul mate for each and every individual. The world is full of people who are worthy of your love, for any number of reasons. The world is full of people who will find you lovable, for any number of reasons. The key, assuming you don’t want to be single (and in the long run, it’s possible you do - I did), is to find a single member of the intersection of those two sets.
But don’t try too soon; you’re still hurting too badly. For the immediate pain, distract yourself as best you can. Once you can look back on this relationship and look at what you can learn from it (which may be about you, or may be about women, or may be about relationships in general), you’ll be ready to try to find some member of that intersection I described above. It’s not just a matter of she’s out there. They’re out there. It’s a matter of reaching a point where you can recognize that this is not the only girl in the world for you, and that no single girl is. Some people never do reach this point, and they create their own solitude and their own unhappiness. Try not to do that to yourself. The important thing, when you’re ready to try again, is to not insist on finding as close to an exact duplicate to this girl as you possibly can. Just try to find someone you like to spend time with. That’s a great start, and the single most important quality you need in a relationship.
