Good Material

by Dolly Alderton

All I want, this very instant, is to write new material; become new material. I want to throw out everything I’ve ever written and start again.

Because the person who is in charge in a relationship is the one who loves the least.

For the first time since our break-up, I feel sorry for her.

And I want to say: We can just talk about being sad, if you like. You don’t have to make the sad thing funny for me. There will be no conversational tokens system in place here. Because I am starting to think that talking about the sadness might be the same thing as processing the sadness. And if we’re not doing that, then we only have our thoughts for company, and our thoughts are unreliable and they invent things and they lie to us and give bad advice. Not talking about the sadness is what leads us into The Madness.

And when Jane asked her why she didn’t do the sensible thing of running away, her answer was: she couldn’t. How could she run away from the person who knew her better than anyone? Why would she run away from her family?

I hold her face in my hands and tell her I’ve missed her. She tells me she’s missed me too. I ask her if she’s glad that she broke up with me and she says that she doesn’t know yet. “When will you know?” I ask. “I don’t think I’ll ever know,” she says, her big blue eyes wet and glassy from booze.

This was the only thing that would solve the problem of my broken heart and, of course, nothing else worked. The answer always was, and always will be, her.

REASONS WHY IT’S GOOD I’M NOT WITH JEN She didn’t want to be with me.

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.”

“You don’t let go once. That’s your first mistake. You say goodbye over a lifetime. You might not have thought about her for ten years, then you’ll hear a song or you’ll walk past somewhere you once went together—something will come to the surface that you’d totally forgotten about. And you say another goodbye. You have to be prepared to let go and let go and let go a thousand times.”

And then I say goodbye to her. I wash up the glasses and remember the ongoing dispute we had about how to stack things on the drying rack. I say goodbye. I go upstairs to bed and I remember when she first came to stay here, how strange it was to wake up next to her in my childhood bedroom. I say goodbye. And it feels okay. I say all my goodbyes, ready to no doubt meet her again tomorrow to say goodbye all over again.

It’s all so random and unfair—the people we want to be with don’t want to be with us and the people who want to be with us are not the people we want to be with.

I’m sorry that I loved you so much more than I liked myself, that must have been a lot to carry. I’m sorry I didn’t take care of you the way you took care of me. And I’m sorry I didn’t take care of myself, either.

Dysfunctional friendships. Those boys are nice, but they don’t really talk to each other or support each other. They just get drunk and take the piss out of each other. Sometimes I felt like I was the only way he could access his emotions, which was too much pressure on me.

But, there I was, with the right person. He wasn’t perfect, but I was in love with him and he was in love with me. And yet I could never really understand whether I was in a good relationship or not.

I started to feel single.

When I’m single, I know where I am. I am alone when I’m ill, but I’m not abandoned. I get a promotion and I celebrate with friends, rather than worrying that my good news might make my partner feel insecure. I can navigate the difficulties of being on my own, but I don’t think I can navigate the difficulties of this.

And I know he was telling the truth. He would have loved me unquestioningly and stubbornly forever. And I don’t know if I want to be loved like that.

I missed feeling like a singular entity with my friends. I felt like I was losing myself.

I was lying next to a man I loved but couldn’t be with, and I was back in the same place I’d got to six months ago. I’d reached the same dead end.

I regret that. I regret a lot of things, as you’ve probably gathered from the last hour.” “Some people write a letter,” I say. “Why waste good material?” he says.