The Flatshare

by Beth O'Leary

That feeling again, the trapped hateful rage at hearing someone you try so hard to love saying the worst things.

I’m so glad you’re out of that relationship, man—it was about habit, not about love.

Life is often simple, but you don’t notice how simple it was until it gets incredibly complicated, like how you never feel grateful for being well until you’re ill, or how you never appreciate your tights drawer until you rip a pair and have no spares.

I don’t want a big bunch of flowers from Justin. I just want him gone—it’s so hard to get on with getting better when he keeps popping up all over the place.

he tipped me over the edge, and now I am in a very different place from the last time he tried to get me back.

“Of course we do. I remember every bloody minute of it. He was vile to you. He’d tell you where to be and how to get there, and then he’d walk you there because you wouldn’t be able to find your way on your own. He’d make every argument your fault, and he wouldn’t give up until you were sorry. He’d ditch you and then pick you up again at a moment’s notice. He told you you were overweight and weird and nobody else would want you, even though you are clearly a goddess of a woman and he ought to have felt lucky to have you. It was terrible. We hated him. And if you hadn’t banned me from talking about him, I would have told you that every bloody day.”

“You had to come to this on your own, Tiff. As tempting as it was to bulldoze in and whisk you away from him, you would have just gone back.”

The section that usually busies itself wondering if I look fat in things seems to have died off altogether.

It’s weird how easily you can get to know someone from the traces they leave behind when they go.

“Relationships like that stop being about ‘voluntarily’ very quickly. There’s lots of ways someone can make you stay with them, or think you want to.”

Can’t believe I wasted all that time—not just those months, but the time before that, the years of dawdling, settling, waiting.

Remind myself that there is no saving of people—people can only save themselves. The best you can do is help when they’re ready.