Good Material

by Dolly Alderton

All talk about being some big adventurer but never followed through.

LOL MAAP SY JUGA

“She said that at the end of a relationship, it’s useful to write a list of reasons of why it’s good you’re no longer together.” “I can’t write that list because I want us to be together.” “I don’t think you do.” “I do, that’s all I want.”

Thirty-first birthday parties were better than the thirtieths. The thirtieths had too much symbolism. Symbolism is good for a story but bad for a party. But by thirty-one, we knew where we were.

“Everybody wants to impress their dad,”

“I don’t care. I fancy everything about you.” “You fancy my period.” “I fancy your period,” I repeated. “Cover me in it, I don’t mind.” “You’re disgusting.”

Bulol bgt ni cowok

“Yes,” she said. “Until then we can text. I’m a great texter.”

Me too

“Tell me exactly how desperate,” I whispered, tucking her hair tightly behind both ears. “I think I need to hear it.” “Goodnight,” she repeated, turning away and putting her key into the door.

Damnnn savage

If there’s one thing I’d say to you, it’s this: you’ve got to WIPE her.”

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind referenced?!?!

It’s strange to think that everything we know about romantic love and sex we first learnt from each other, and yet now we don’t speak.

Poetry is the most reviled and redundant art form, everyone rolls their eyes at it and takes the piss out of it. But the second that something shit happens in our lives, it’s the first recourse we have.

“I’d like to be single,” Jane replies. “I think most women would. It’s men who don’t know how to do it.”

“Break-ups can be a good thing,” Jane says. “They can teach us about who we really are.” “Yeah, maybe, like, break-up number one or two,” I sigh. “But break-ups have depreciating gains. I’m thirty-five now. I know who I am. I am already sick of myself.”

There are so many hidden miniature break-ups within a big break-up.

“Thirty-five is the youth of middle age,” I say. “We’re at the first stage of something new rather than being at the last stage of being young. I felt relieved when I turned thirty-five. It was like turning eighteen again.”

I feel like my singleness may end up being a bit of an inconvenience for everyone.

Why was it so easy for five of Jen’s friends who are all mothers or expectant mothers to drop everything and spend a weekend away at a hotel, yet I could barely get my best mates to come out for a few drinks?

“I’m someone who lives in their head, I’d like to at least try to live in my body too.”

Relate on this

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.

And if I start a new sub-genre of love with someone else, am I allowed to bring in all the things I loved from the last one?

I managed to stall the break-up process by finding problems with each of the flats we found—no window in the bathroom, no corridor to divide the space.

I kinda sense that he's the problem

I still feel bad about how it ended—I couldn’t find the courage to initiate it myself, so she had to ask me to break up with her.

I now understand what it is to want to be with someone who doesn’t want to be with you any more.

“Pleased to have realized early on in my life that you can trust nobody. Rely on nobody. When someone tells you something, don’t believe them. When something is given to you as a fact, ask yourself whether it really is a fact. Everybody is out for themselves in this life. Everyone. And that’s how it should be. I should be out for myself,”

“I’m thirty-five”: “That’s an exciting age.” “Don’t say that,” I reply. “What?” she says. “ ‘That’s an exciting age.’ It sounds like that line from Peter Pan. ‘To die will be an awfully big adventure.’ ”

Every good night out hinges on discontent.

A good time needs the fires of tragedy underneath it to keep it on a rolling boil.

It’s like I was off sick from life for a while, and sometimes it’s nice to be off sick. Sometimes it’s nice to not be a thing, in the world, trying so desperately to be a person.

“Sophie, you can do anything you want to me,” I say.

WHY MEN-

If I were feeling ungenerous, it would be easy for me to moan about the fact that the only time I ever really see Avi and Jane is at their house, with their kids; that there is rarely any effort to suggest a plan other than me slotting into their lives.

Gen Z saw how we used social media, as the first young people who used it, which was way too earnestly and with too much personal sharing, and they found it extremely cringe—”

they still want attention because they’re young and stupid like we were, but they do it in this style where they give less of themselves. They’re showing off and trying to be funny and asking everyone to fancy them, but in this sort of enigmatic way.”

‘The clearest your mind will ever be is the five seconds after orgasm.’ ”

Lol

I can’t believe I used to take this shit seriously. Unsubstantiated claims of my genius, flimsy platitudes of reassurance, unevidenced statements of support—all spoken with this careful, pandering tone as if I am a baby monarch being paraded around my kingdom on a velvet baby throne. It’s so embarrassing.

She was the one with all the power. Because the person who is in charge in a relationship is the one who loves the least.

“So you’re saying you want to go back in time to a few weeks ago when we were just fucking?” “I mean…yeah. Sort of.”

RED FUCKING FLAG

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.

We’ve left our best friends’ house like we always did, the same people as we always were, but with a completely different relationship to each other.

“Men are so predictable,” she says. “Even the good ones.”

“Can you keep an eye out for them here?” “Absolutely,” she says, nodding. “And I can always post them to you.” I feel like my heart has stopped.

I can feel she’s gearing up for something. I have that stomach churn I get when I know that someone is going to instigate a conversation about feelings.

Relatable lol

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.”

“Life is a bit more difficult for women. More difficult than it is for us, I mean. And you don’t need to ask them to explain why or understand it all. You just need to be nice to them.”

Really, the thing that’s going to hurt a lot is the fact that someone doesn’t want to be with you any more.

It was like my career was my bad boyfriend—it sensed every time I was going to leave it and, at that exact moment, would promise me all sorts of things to make me stay.

People didn’t really notice that I was always single because I had so many other things going on and they always wanted to hear about them.

I don’t know whether it was something I actually wanted, or whether it was something I got frustrated with myself for not wanting.

Every night the conversation would turn to all of their partners and I listened to these women I love talk about the men they love with despair and adoration and amusement and frustration. And I realized that this was something I wanted to try—not just being in love, but being in this club.

But everyone around me was telling me that I shouldn’t wait until I was thirty-five. Being single and thirty-five seemed to be the thing that every woman I knew wanted to avoid at all costs.

The risk felt so much higher for me and it wasn’t something he would ever truly acknowledge. This baby’s life would rely on my maternity leave, my savings, my body, my career. I would have to make all the sacrifice while Andy’s life could continue mostly as normal.

“You have a home that is yours,” she said. “And your own money. Don’t you?” “I have a bit of money, yes.” “And you have your education. And you have your career.” I nodded. “Then you have everything,” she said.