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Kindle Notes & Highlights
It’s so restful to come home, shut the door and have my own little nook. With no one to tell me that there are too many candles or cushions, or indeed, to tell you that there are too many Xboxes and samurai swords, or vinyls and bike parts, or vintage travel posters and pasta makers, or whatever your bag is.
some people are simply not naturally assembled for cohabiting, and I suspect I might be one of them.
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would have had to...compromise. Take my partner’s feelings into account. Let them read the manuscript of The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober and listen to feedback as to whether they were cool with my revealing details of drunken one-night stands. Not go and live in a different country for seven months, if they didn’t want me to. I mean, I could have gone to Bruges for three weeks maybe, or I could have written a watered-down, less raw book, but man-oh-man, that would have been annoying when what I wanted was to grab each endeavour by the scruff of the neck. Single, I have been able to make my
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I decide when I want to leave a party, I decide what I want to do this weekend and who I want to see, without having to consult anyone else. It’s wondrous.
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BECAUSE YOU LOVE THEM TO BITS... And can’t imagine ever wanting to be without them. This is the only reason that is actually wise. The only reason we’ll keep. If you would marry them even if you couldn’t tell anyone else, ever; if you would marry them if you couldn’t wear a ring; if you had to get married in an empty room wearing a bin-bag, and you still would. Then that’s a great litmus test that you should.
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If I ever meet someone where this applies, I probably will marry them.
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I previously always thought that my future beau would take my financial fuckwittery into hand, and we would save together, and that would be that problem fixed. *Dusts hands* Now I’ve realized that it’s down to me. It’s on me. It’s up to me. I owe it to Future Me.
Huh yes.
You are not Atlas, who carried the world on his back. It can feel juvenile asking your parents for a loan, or asking your brother to help you move house, but it’s not. You’re merely doing what married people do all the time: asking for help.
It felt insanely good, doing all the Adulting. I felt calmer. Because I’d started creating my own security, rather than looking for it on Hinge. My aim now is to colour myself in all the dang way. Every corner, every tricky bit, every inch of sky. I highly recommend it. After all, if you’re complete without them, a partner becomes a choice rather than a necessity.
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Y’know those little tags in drink adverts/labels on booze that say ‘Drink Responsibly’ (personally: never did, never will, never gonna happen. Also, I hate those labels because they oh-so-subtly place the blame on the person, rather than the booze, if they wind up wasted: ‘We told you to drink responsibly! You mis-used our luxury product!’).
Hah!
The drunk rush in, where the sober fear to tread. Sobriety gives you caution and inhibitions, rather than devil-may-care recklessness. This is a good thing, although sometimes I do have to remind myself of that, when I’m feeling impatient and craving an instant blaze.
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When I’m feeling low, or insecure, or ill-at-ease as a human, I simply don’t date.
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However, people are entitled to their secrets. Did you know that? I didn’t.
What other people think about us is none of our business. Just because it’s about us, that does not make it our property. Plus, snooping only ever turns up the bad.
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really want Charlie Brooker to write a Black Mirror depicting a society where singledom is fanfared in the way that coupledom is. That would be a belter.
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Your heart is actually like a colossal, rambling country house. You own this house. Throughout your life, you take in lodgers. Some live there your entire life; some come and go. It’s one of those cool, creaky stately homes replete with secret underground tunnels and hidden rooms behind fake bookcases.
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There’s a whimsical room atop the house that feels more magical than the rest somehow. It’s probably set in a tower, a turret with a stained-glass window and curved furniture to fit its round walls. This is where you place the person you are in romantic love with. It’s your favourite room in the house, so you award it to them. The shock comes when the lodger in the tower room suddenly leaves. You forgot they were just a lodger. You forgot they could depart. They may leave under the inky cloak of night. They
‘Ever loved someone so much, you would do anything for them? Yeah, well, make that someone yourself and do whatever the hell you want.’
Ha
Alain de Botton makes a compelling point that whereas singles are perceived as anti-romantic, they are often the most romantic of us all. He cautions that, ‘Fervent romantics should be especially careful of ending up in mediocre relationships.’
waldeinsamkeit which roughly translated means – the exquisite feeling of being happily alone in the forest.
miss my dad terribly, but in some ways his death has freed me. I can no longer disappoint him, because he’s no longer here, which is at once heartbreaking and emancipating.
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