Good Material

by Dolly Alderton

don’t know how to choose the right words to correctly represent all the thoughts and the feelings that are piling up inside me. Women think we don’t want to talk to them about our emotions because we’re embarrassed of being vulnerable. It’s more that we’re embarrassed of seeming stupid. Every time I hear Jane and Jen or Mum and one of her friends talk about something emotional, it’s like listening to an orchestra perform. Often with no warm-up, they launch effortlessly into the chosen symphony of feelings for the day. And when I offer my thoughts I know I’m ruining it—hooting along tunelessly like a grade-one recorder player.

And then we met and fell in love and we introduced each other to all of it, like children showing each other their favourite toys. That instinct never goes—look at my fire engine, look at my vinyl collection. Look at all these things I’ve chosen to represent who I am. It was fun to find out about each other’s self-made cultures and make our own hybrid in the years of eating, watching, reading, listening, sleeping and living together.

“Getting dumped is never really about getting dumped.” “What is it about, then?” I ask. “It’s about every rejection you’ve ever experienced in your entire life. It’s about the kids at school who called you names. And the parent who never came back. And the girls who wouldn’t dance with you at the disco. And the school girlfriend who wanted to be single when she went to uni. And any criticism at work. When someone says they don’t want to be with you, you feel the pain of every single one of those times in life where you felt like you weren’t good enough. You live through all of it again.”