Everything I Know About Love

by Dolly Alderton

But I found the reality of boys to be slightly disappointing. Not as funny as the girls I had met there, not nearly as interesting or kind. And, for some reason, I could never quite relax around any of them.

I found being a teenager one big, frustrating, mortifying, exposing, codependent embarrassment that couldn’t end fast enough.

I carried on because I just wanted to be happy and everyone knows when you’re thinner, you’re happier.

We’re told we have to look like the women who are paid to look like that as their profession.

The love we have for each other stays the same, but the format, the tone, the regularity, and the intimacy of our friendship will change forever.

But little did I know how much work it takes to sustain that kind of intimacy with a friend as you get older—it doesn’t just stick around coincidentally.

The invisible dimension created from the history and love and future we shared for this one person. It was then

I knew everything had changed: we had transitioned. We hadn’t chosen each other. But we were family.

The external scenery had changed, but the internal stuff was exactly the same: I was anxious, restless, and self-loathing.

“Then I’ll fucking marry you,” he said. “Is that what you want to hear? Because I’ll do it. I’ll take you down to City Hall first thing tomorrow morning and I’ll marry the hell out of you. And then you can stay for as long as you want.”

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.”

“I’ll be OK, Doll,” she said, her huge brown eyes brimming with tears until one escaped through her lashes and ran down her cheek. “I just have to find a way to live without her.”

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.

A reminder that no matter what we lose, no matter how uncertain and unpredictable life gets, some people really do walk next to you forever.

“I’m not interested in appropriate. Darkness and edges and corners is where buried treasure lies. Fuck appropriate.”

Life is a difficult, hard, sad, unreasonable, irrational thing. So little of it makes sense. So much of it is unfair. And a lot of it simply boils down to the unsatisfying formula of good and bad luck.

If you feel exhausted by people, it’s because you’re willingly playing the martyr to make them like you. It’s your problem, not theirs.

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

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.

More often than not, the love someone gives you will be a reflection of the love you give yourself.

you can’t treat yourself with kindness, care, and patience, chances are someone else won’t either.

Be aware that abstinence could feel so peaceful, the thought of returning to the land of the loving may start to feel impossible. It could leave you terrified of ruining that by inviting someone into it.

When you’re looking for love and it seems like you might not ever find it, remember you probably have access to an abundance of it already, just not the romantic kind. This kind of love might not kiss you in the rain or propose marriage. But it will listen to you, inspire and restore you. It will hold you when you cry, celebrate when you’re happy, and sing All Saints with you when you’re drunk. You have so much to gain and learn from this kind of love. You can carry it with you forever. Keep it as close to you as you can.

And, finally, thank you to Farly, without whose unwavering cheering and championing I would not have written this book. You are—you always will be—my favorite love story.