Don't You Forget About Me

by Mhairi McFarlane

He was like opening a plain wooden box and finding a stash of valuables inside.

I didn’t know what falling in love felt like, I’d never done it before. I discovered you recognize it easily when it arrives.

“There are always those worse off than you. Your problems are not invalid as a result, or needing to be measured against an internationally recognized pain scale before we decide if your condition is severe enough to treat.”)

“I love you, you know. You have me.”

Here’s what life has taught me so far: don’t worry about that thing you’re worrying about. Chances are, it’ll be obliterated by something you didn’t anticipate that’s a million times worse.

“Sometimes because the people we wanted to care for us, didn’t care for us, we live with a deliberate lack of care for ourselves. A way of getting back at them, through self-neglect.”

‘Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.’”

I want to get a First, not to be obnoxious, but to prove that there’s no shame in traveling the long way around to get where you want to go. It doesn’t matter if you take wrong turns. Arriving somewhere you want to be, in the end, is what counts. So I reach out into the past, take the hand of that vulnerable, hopeful girl I used to be, and pull her forward to join me.

“I wondered, Georgina, if you could imagine being in love with me again, the way I’m in love with you. And that given you’re the best thing to ever happen to me, if you could give me the chance to try to be the best thing that ever happened to you.”