Good Material

by Dolly Alderton

I don’t know how old I am any more. I don’t know where I want to be. I’m not technically too old to be in a club, but I don’t want to be in a club. And I don’t want to stay in either. I don’t have anything you’re meant to have to stay in—no girlfriend or baby or pet or flat of my own. I don’t want to be on a night out and I don’t want to be on a night in. Where do I want to be?

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.

“I don’t know how to get over it, Mum,” I say. “At this point I’m so tired of myself. I don’t know how to let go of her.” “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.”

Avi thinks my main life problem is that I’m locked in a prison of my own nostalgia. I thought this was bollocks and then after he pointed it out I walked past an Ikea lamp in my GP’s reception that I realized I had once owned and I felt a strange longing that could only be described as a deep psychological problem.