Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for J/P Haitian Relief OrganizationThings are finally looking "Up&Up" for Chris Martin.
Nearly two years after he and Gwyneth Paltrow announced their "conscious uncoupling," the Coldplay singer has opened up about their "wonderful separation-divorce" in an interview with The Sunday Times. "It's a divorce but it's a weird one. It's funny. I don't think about that word very often: 'divorce.' I don't see it that way," Martin said. "I see it more like you meet someone, you have some time together and things just move through. I've lived a lot of life since then."
Indeed. In addition to recording the album A Head Full of Dreams, Martin went on to date Jennifer Lawrence and Annabelle Wallis post-Paltrow. Though he's doing better, he's had a tough time getting over his ex. "I still wake up down a lot of days. But now I feel like I've been given the tools to turn it around," he said. "You can come at it very aggressively and blame and blame. Or you can put yourself in the garage, so to speak. Take yourself apart and clean off the bits. Reassemble." Martin has since immersed himself in literature, finding solace in Auschwitz survivor Viktor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning and Rumi's poem The Guest House. "That one Rumi poem changes everything. It says that even when you're unhappy, it's good for you. It took me a year to get it. A year of depression and all that."
Coldplay's manager Phil Harvey confirmed that the singer suffered from a "really bleak period" after his breakup, revealing that Martin was "in pain and struggling to see the light at the end of the tunnel." For about a year, he told The Sunday Times, "We were all worried about him—the band, his family. When someone's really, really low and on their own a lot, as a friend, your mind goes to the worst-case scenario. That period didn't last for ever, but there was a time when we were all regularly checking in on him, just trying to make sure he wasn't on his own."
Martin's latest interview shows just how far he's come since he broke his silence about the breakup in April 2014. "About two years ago I was a mess, really, because I can't enjoy the things that we are good at and I can't enjoy the great things around me because I'm burdened by this," he told BBC Radio 1 at the time. "I've got to not blame anyone else and make some changes." Regarding the "breakdown" of his marriage, he said, "I wouldn't use the word 'breakdown.' This was more a realization about trying to grow up, basically. If you can't open yourself up, you can't appreciate the wonder inside. So, you can be with someone very wonderful, but because of your own issues you cannot let that be celebrated in the right way."