Halseymay be “bad at love,” but she’s good at seeing her fans. 

Just over a year ago, in June 2018, the songstress took the Good Morning America stage in New York City’s Central Park for a performance, clad in a white crop top and matching pants embellished with glittering trim. While the star belted out one of her now signature hits, according to a new interview with Cosmopolitan, she was weathering heartbreak beneath the surface. 

“I was doing Good Morning America and I’m in a blond wig and white patent-leather outfit, twirling around while I’m going through a heinous breakup,” she recalled to the magazine. The next month, Halsey announced to fans she and her year-long boyfriend, G-Eazy, were “taking some time apart.”

During the performances, two faces in the crowd caught her eye. 

“I look down and there are these two girls, one with pink hair, one with blue hair, septum piercings, cool as fuck, still loving me, probably knowing what a weird time I’m going through,” she described to Cosmopolitan. “I looked at them, looked at myself in my sparkly Britney Spears outfit, and went, Ohhh no, they deserve way better than this. If those girls can be that brave in who they are, then I owe them better than this homogenized bulls–t.” 

She and G-Eazy rekindled their romance and then split again by the end of October 2018. She’s since been linked to fellow music star Yungblud. 

Today, Halsey has a positive outlook on how everything has unfolded. “But hey…if the worst thing that’s happened to me so far is I wore dumb clothes and dated a sh–ty dude, I think I’m doing all right,” she told the magazine. 

Now, with her third studio album expected this year, the star continues to connect with fans—and herself—through her music. 

“I have bipolar disorder, and I get bored of s–t really quickly. Music is this thing that I get to focus all my chaotic energy into, and it’s not a void that doesn’t love me back,” she explained to Cosmopolitan. “It’s been the only place I can direct all that and have something to show for it that tells me, ‘Hey, you’re not that bad.’ If my brain is a bunch of broken glass, I get to make it into a mosaic.”