Heart the Lover

by Lily King

I’ve noticed that about people who had stable childhoods. They like to create their own problems.

But I’m not good at saying that I feel hurt or forgotten or rejected. There had been no room for that growing up. I’m more skilled at burying those emotions. Or hiding them in my fiction.

‘No. Love is crushing. Love is something you let yourself feel at your own peril, despite your better sense.’

‘You know how you can remember exactly when and where you read certain books? A great novel, a truly great one, not only captures a particular fictional experience, it alters and intensifies the way you experience your own life while you’re reading it. And it preserves it, like a time capsule.’

Maybe it’s true what the philosopher said, that the past and the future don’t exist, that this is the only moment we ever have, this moment right now and this moment and this—