Ghosted

by Rosie Walsh

We can perhaps only ever fall in love without knowing quite who we have fallen in love with. Alain de Botton Essays in Love

“More will be revealed,” my father always liked to say about people. “You have to watch and wait, Sarah.”

I wondered how it was that you could spend weeks, months—years, even—just chugging on, nothing really changing, and then, in the space of a few hours, the script of your life could be completely rewritten.

I can’t know you’re somewhere in the world and not be with you. I think we should try to make this work.”

“Sarah, if we didn’t have thousands of years’ writings on the pain of love—not to mention the questioning of faith, the loss of self it precipitates—I’d be out of a job.”

If you told me to stay, if you told me we could start a life together here, I’d stay. Even though I’ve known you only a few days, even though I swore I’d never come back. For you, I’d stay.

“I don’t believe that love is meant to be like an explosion. It is not meant to be dramatic, or ravenous, or any of the silly words ascribed it by writers and musicians. But I do believe that when you know, you know. And I knew, and I let it go without any real sort of a fight, and I will never forgive myself that.”

“A silent phone brings out the very worst in us,” he said. “All of us.”

Nobody warns you that life continues to be complicated after you’ve Done the Right Thing. That there is no reward, beyond some intangible sense of moral fortitude.

Strangely, Mum always seems a little happier in the winter, too. I think that’s because it’s more acceptable to stay indoors once the temperatures drop. Summer is fraught with the expectation of increased socializing and outdoor activity, whereas in the winter her small existence needs little explanation or defense.