The Flatshare

by Beth O'Leary

there’s the overwhelming absence of one of the greatest aspects of your adult life, but you do get much more admin done.

Being nice is a good thing. You can be strong and nice. You don’t have to be one or the other.

People struggle to see it’s not about whether she’s going to die—palliative care isn’t just a place you go to slowly slip away. More people live and leave than die on our wards. It’s about being comfortable for the duration of something necessary and painful. Making bad times easier.

That’s what’s always happened before—he goes off, doors slam, he freezes me out, ignores my calls, but then he realizes his mistake and just when I think I’m ready to start getting over him, there he is again, holding out his hand and telling me to come with him on some kind of amazing adventure.

Two a.m. is terrible time for dwelling on legal issues. Worst of all the times. If midnight is witching hour, two a.m. is dwelling hour.

to, but mostly it just makes them compliment me on my “proportions” a lot. I think what they’re really saying is, “Gosh, you’re big, but without being particularly fat!” or, “Well done on being tall but not lanky!” Or perhaps, “You are confusing my gender norms by being very woman-shaped despite the fact that you are the height and width of an average male!”

tetchily.

“Can you text back and tell him that comments like that are the reason womankind cares so much about their measurements? And that by declaring that ‘most girls would hate that,’ he is perpetuating the female body image problem, and setting women up against one another, which is one of the greatest problems feminism faces to this day?”

This is an end to the endless twisting in the gut, the endless waiting on the edges of conversations, the endless knowing but trying not to know.