Is there anything that Ariana Grande can't do? If you've read her recent interview with Vogue, you'd be hard-pressed to think otherwise. In addition to being the second most followed person on Instagram, releasing two certified-platinum albums in a single calendar year, and embarking on a world tour, Ariana has also had to publicly deal with loss and heartache, somehow rising from it all like a phoenix from the ashes.
One of her major sources of heartache was obviously the death of her 26-year-old her ex-boyfriend, collaborator and rapper Mac Miller, who died in September 2018 of an accidental drug overdose. Ariana opened up about how headlining Coachella in April was a bittersweet reminder of the times she had with Mac before his tragic passing. "I never thought I'd even go to Coachella," she said. "I was always a person who never went to festivals and never went out and had fun like that. But the first time I went was to see Malcolm perform, and it was such an incredible experience. I went the second year as well, and I associate...heavily...it was just kind of a mindfuck, processing how much has happened in such a brief period." After their first breakup, Ariana and Mac got back together in September 2016 and dated until May 2018.
Following her breakup with Mac, news broke that Ari started dating SNL comedian Pete Davidson the same month. Around the same time, Mac was arrested for driving while under the influence. Some fans of Mac believed that Ariana was a major reason for why it happened, despite Mac's openness about his struggle with substance abuse. One fan, in particular, went as far as shaming Ariana for breaking up with him after he allegedly wrote his fourth album, The Divine Feminine, about her:
Ariana also addressed this critical moment in her interview, saying people that keep up with her life rarely ever know the true story. "People don't see any of the real stuff that happens, so they are loud about what they think happened," she said. "They didn't see the years of work and fighting and trying or the love and exhaustion. That tweet came from a place of complete defeat, and you have no idea how many times I warned him that that would happen and fought that fight, for how many years of our friendship, of our relationship. You have no idea so you're not allowed to pull that card, because you don't fucking know. That's where that came from."
Things with Mac's addiction were often so bad that Ariana said she had to keep major tabs on his whereabouts while she was on her Dangerous Woman tour "to ensure he wasn't on a bender," which honestly sounds super exhausting. "By no means was what we had perfect, but, like, fuck. He was the best person ever, and he didn't deserve the demons he had. I was the glue for such a long time, and I found myself becoming...less and less sticky. The pieces just started to float away."
Of her highly publicized whirlwind of a relationship with Pete, Ariana also confessed that she barley knew him...but somehow ended up getting engaged to him regardless. Apparently, a group of her friends introduced them pair to each other and the rest, as they say, was history: "My friends were like, 'Come! We’re gonna have a fun summer.' And then I met Pete, and it was an amazing distraction. It was frivolous and fun and insane and highly unrealistic, and I loved him, and I didn't know him. I'm like an infant when it comes to real life and this old soul, been-around-the-block-a-million-times artist. I still don't trust myself with the life stuff."
Since Ariana's relationship with Pete ended, she's now trying to focus on herself while staying single as a Pringle. "I think that this is the first album [Thank U, Next] and also the first year of my life where I'm realizing that I can no longer put off spending time with myself, just as me. I've been boo'd up my entire adult life. I've always had someone to say good night to. So Thank U, Next was this moment of self-realization. It was this scary moment of 'Wow, you have to face all this stuff now. No more distractions. You have to heal all this shit.'" Ari—you're doing great, sweetie.
***
This article originally appeared on Cosmopolitan.com. Minor edits have been made by the Cosmo.ph editors.
