Everything I Know About Love

by Dolly Alderton

anything for

Online dating is for losers and I include myself in that.

If a man loves you because you are thin, he’s no man at all.

“It may seem that life is difficult at times but it’s really as simple as breathing in and out,” she read. “Rip open hearts with your fury and tear down egos with your modesty. Be the person you wish you could be, not the person you feel you are doomed to be. Let yourself run away with your feelings. You were made so that someone could love you. Let them love you.”

But I’d read that it was guttation—a process where a plant sheds unnecessary water at night; it works hard to get rid of everything putting pressure on its roots. And I told them that meant something to me. Me and the philodendron were doing a thing together.

It was at this time that I was reminded of the chain of support that keeps a sufferer afloat—the person at the core of a crisis needs the support of their family and best friends, while those people need support from their friends, partners, and family. Then even those people twice removed might need to talk to someone about it too. It takes a village to mend a broken heart.

the human need for validation and how it cuts happiness short.

It was those parts of ourselves, he argued, that were the most beautiful.

You’ll be able to be academic about yourself in conversation. But, you know, all the talky-talky stuff will only take you so far. You need to really feel it in your core, that change. It can’t just be stuff you discuss with a therapist. You need to feel it in your body—” his voice slowed—“you need to feel it in the backs of your knees, in your womb, in your toes, in your fingertips.”

You’re your own mother now. You have to listen to what you want.”

“But whoever fell in love with appropriate?”

like an air-conditioning unit has finally been turned off, the low, relentless hum of which you hadn’t realized was there until everything is silent.

It was pixels.

He was the little boy in the playground who covered his eyes

and thought no one could see him.

“I’m talking about you and me,”

Time and time again, I had created intensity with a man and confused it with intimacy.

Because I am enough. My heart is enough. The stories and the sentences twisting around my mind are enough. I am fizzing and frothing and buzzing and exploding. I’m bubbling over and burning up. My early-morning walks and my late-night baths are enough. My loud laugh at the pub is enough. My piercing whistle, my singing in the shower, my double-jointed toes are enough. I am a just-pulled pint with a good, frothy head on it. I am my own universe; a galaxy; a solar system. I am the warm-up act, the main event, and the backing singers.

And if this is it, if this is all there is—just me and the trees and the sky and the seas—I know now that that’s enough. I am enough. I am enough. The words ricocheted through me, shaking every cell as they traveled. I felt them; I understood them; they fused into my bones. The thought galloped and jumped through my system like a racehorse. I called it out to the dark sky. I watched my proclamation bounce from star to star, swinging like Tarzan from carbon to carbon. I am whole and complete. I will never run out. And I am more than enough.

You are the sum total of everything that has happened to you

but at some point you’re going to have to get in the car and really fucking feel how it all works.

It is futile and knackering to try and make all your tiny choices representative of your moral compass then beat yourself up when this plan inevitably fails. Feminists can get waxed. Priests can swear. Vegetarians can wear leather shoes. Do as much good as you can. The weighty representation of the world cannot rest on every decision you make.

It is the greatest relief to finally let it happen.

It’s completely OK to focus on yourself.

Always have a book in your bag.

If you’re feeling wildly overwhelmed with everything, try this: clean your room, answer all your unanswered emails, listen to a podcast, have a bath, go to bed before eleven.

Everything will change. And it could happen any morning.

Nearly everything I know about love, I’ve learned in my long-term friendships with women.

I know how it feels for identity to be bigger than just you; to be part of an “us.”

And I know how liberating it feels to be loved and accepted with all my flaws in return

I know what it is to feel like you’ve always got a lighthouse—lighthouses—to guide you back to dry land; to feel the warmth of its beam as it squeezes your hand standing next to you at a funeral of someone you loved.

I know that love can be loud and jubilant.

And I also know that love is a pretty quiet thing.

I know that love happens under the splendor of moon and stars and fireworks and sunsets but it also happens when you’re lying on blow-up air beds in a childhood bedroom, sitting in the emergency room or in the queue for a passport or in a traffic jam. Love is a quiet, reassuring, relaxing, pottering, pedantic, harmonious hum of a thing; something you can easily forget is there, even though its palms are outstretched beneath you in case you fall.

Or I could start a new story on my own.

“I love your new home and I love you,”

It was the home I now carried on my back like a snail. The sense that I was finally in responsible and loving hands.

Love was there in my empty bed.

It had been there all along.

You should never have to work to hold a man’s attention.

More often than not, the love someone gives you will be a reflection of the love you give yourself. If you can’t treat yourself with kindness, care, and patience, chances are someone else won’t either.

However thin or fat you are is no indicator of the love you deserve or will receive.

If you lose respect for someone, you won’t be able to fall back in love with them.

You’re not an object to be won, you’re a human made of flesh and blood and guts and gut feelings.

“If equal affection cannot be / Let the more loving one be me.”

it doesn’t make them ineligible. Everyone has history. Take the time to hear theirs.

Anyone can be fucking fancied. It is a far greater thing to be loved.

Men aren’t bad, women aren’t good. People are people and we all make, allow, and enable mistakes.

To lower your heart rate and drift off on nights when sleep feels impossible, dream of all the adventures that lie ahead of you and the distances you’ve traveled so far. Wrap your arms tightly round your body and, as you hold yourself, hold this one thought in your head: I’ve got you.

trying desperately to make sense of time.