Katy Perry opens up about the time she and Orlando Bloom broke up

Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom may be engaged, expecting, and as solid as ever, but as anyone who has followed their relationship can attest, there have also been some dark spots in their coupledom. They broke up for a brief period back in 2017, a sad time that Perry is now opening up about in interviews.In a chat with q on CBC, the “Daisies” singer was perfectly honest about how she felt back in March 2017 when she and Bloom distanced themselves romantically. "I lost my smile," she said. "I don't know if my smile was ever fully, authentically mine but I was riding on the high of a smile for a long time. Which was the validation, love and admiration from the outside world... and then that shifted."According to the singer that shift wasn’t huge, but it was enough to rock her world. Especially in the wake of her album at the time, Witness, failing to live up to expectations. "My career was on this trajectory when it was going up, up and up, and then I had the smallest shift, not that huge from an outside perspective. But for me it was seismic," she said. "I had broken up with my boyfriend, who is now my baby-daddy-to-be, and then I was excited about flying high off the next record and the record didn't get me high anymore. The validation didn't get me high, and so I just crashed."[video_embed id='1614439']RELATED: Why Katy Perry’s engagement ring might look a little familiar[/video_embed]During that crash things got really bad for Perry, who has spoken in the past about her experience with situational depression. She revealed in the interview that gratitude is the thing that kept her from giving into suicidal thoughts. "Gratitude is probably the thing that saved my life, because if I didn't find that, I would have wallowed in my own sadness and probably just jumped," she shared. "But I found the ways to be grateful. If it gets really, really hard I walk around and say, 'I am grateful, I am grateful' even though I am in a s--t mood."

sometimes i don’t know what’s worse trying to avoid the virus or the waves of depression that come with this new norm

— KATY PERRY (@katyperry) May 12, 2020

They say hindsight is 20/20, and looking back Perry admits that while the experience “broke” her in half, she also appreciates that it made her a stronger person and artist. After all, as she said in the interview, some of her most powerful music comes from her darkest places. "It was so important for me to be broken so that I could find my wholeness in a whole different way. And be more dimensional than just living my life like a thirsty pop star all the time," she said.Earlier this year, Perry opened up to Vogue about dealing with depression as well. She also spoke about how tough 2017 and 2018 were on her, revealing that she didn’t even want to get out of bed. “In the past, I had been able to overcome it, but this time something happened that made me fall down too many flights of stairs,” she said at the time. “I had to really go on a mental health journey.”Perry and Bloom became engaged in February 2019 but they have had to postpone their wedding several times now given the pandemic. In March the American Idol judge revealed her pregnancy in the video for “Never Worn White,” and a month later she and Bloom confirmed they’re expecting a girl with a messy gender reveal video.“He’s really excited for a little girl,” Perry said recently of Bloom’s feelings about the upcoming addition to their family (he already has a son from his previous marriage to model Miranda Kerr). “They say that little girls are daddy’s little girl. That’s how it’s going to be. We’ll see.”[video_embed id='1986248']Before you go: Miley performs to an empty stadium for Global Goal concert[/video_embed]