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If you put “hot fireman to get rescued by” into Google, I’m pretty sure a photo of Paul would come up. If I were to ever set my kitchen on fire, I guarantee, it would be a scary schoolmarm-type firewoman coming to save me. Someone who would give me a stern lecture on smoke alarm maintenance.
What if I never find a connection like these two have? The thought brings a lump to my throat. Everyone assumes single girls approaching thirty spend their time stressing about whether they’ll ever get to have a wedding or a baby. But for me, I’m more concerned that I’ll never know what it feels like to have that kind of life-altering connection with someone, and that I’ll never get to experience sex like they have in the movies. I know, I know, movie sex isn’t real—it’s all choreographed and everyone orgasms together, like a perfectly conducted orchestra, but surely someone must be having
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“How did you meet?” is my all-time favorite question—the first thing I ask anyone in a relationship. I love hearing how people’s paths have crossed in seemingly random ways, and how that chance encounter has affected the direction of their lives so profoundly. I’m your classic hopeless romantic. And yet recently, perhaps since losing Mum, I’ve been finding it harder to witness other people’s “happily ever afters.”
Maybe it was easier to be happy for other people when I felt my own soulmate might be just around the corner, but I keep turning corners, and no one is ever there.
“You have to believe in a little magic when it comes to matters of the heart,”
Everyone is moving on, without me.
Maybe I just need to accept I’ll never be the happy-go-lucky person I was before Mum died.
I wonder what my possessions might say about me. I regret not packing my decent underwear now. With a jolt of anxiety, I realize that my diary is in that bag. The inner monologue of a grief-stricken twenty-nine-year-old woman might not be the best introduction to a potential soulmate. I shake my head. The book is clearly a diary; what kind of weirdo would go through someone else’s personal possessions? I look back at the bed, where I have unpacked and inspected the entire contents of this man’s case. Oh.
“I think objects can be powerful conduits for memories.”
All those hours my mother must have spent doing childish activities for my benefit: collecting shells at Portishead beach, making papier-mâché crowns to paint and decorate, endless treasure hunts in the garden to find buried coins made of kitchen foil. All that time she invested in my childhood happiness. I wish now I had held on to just one of those papier-mâché crowns.
How crazy am I acting, on a scale of one to Amy Dunne in Gone Girl?
“I’m sorry.” I can’t think of any different words to say. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. How many times have those words been said to me? Maybe we don’t have enough words to express sympathy. We have fifty ways to describe a cup of coffee, but I can only think of one way to say, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Everything in the house just reminds me of how things used to be, a different life. Nothing I keep can bring that back.”
“Where do you think the love goes, when no one’s left to tell the story?”
“Someone once told me that growing up feeling loved allows you to go on to love other people. Maybe love is simply a huge chain letter, passed down through the generations. The details of the stories begin not to matter.”
I’ve never heard a man talk about love so plainly, with so little coyness. I wonder if all the men I’ve ...
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“When you are with someone for a long time, you grow into each other, like adjoining trees with tangled roots. It’s hard to extricate yourself and find the part that’s left—who you were before.”
“A doctor? Who?”
If you believe in fate leading you to love, do you also have to believe it is fate that leads love away? Are we all just floating in the sea, completely dependent on the tide and the universe to steer us to a happy harbor, or do we have oars? Do we have a chance to steer ourselves to shore?
“I fall in love with myself, and I want someone to share it with me. I want someone to share me with me.”
“The Roman poet Horace said: ‘Don’t hope or fear, but seize today, you must! And in tomorrow put complete mistrust.’ All any of us have is today.”
“Most of us will never be the best at anything we do. It isn’t a reason not to do it.”
I’m suddenly overwhelmed by a desire to press my whole face right against his beard, to feel what it would be like to nestle into this warm, comforting nest, like a baby bird coming home.
studiously focusing on the handle of my mug. “Just because a guy likes the book your dad read and buys the perfume your mum wore—it doesn’t mean he’s going to fill the hole in your life that they left.”
Why do guys that tick every other box always have to have a weird “thing”? Why can’t I just meet a normal, unmarried man who likes Phil Collins and has a regular number of kitchens in his house?
“I think a jumper and a shoe are a small price to pay to have met you.”
I have these vivid dreams less frequently now. A painful pleasure, but I would not be without them. They are a chance to see her again, to spend time in her company. On waking, when the deception is realized, I feel the sorrow of losing her all over again, but then my mind scrabbles to collect up the breadcrumbs of detail that will keep her real. I scribble down in my diary everything I can remember: the coffeed cuff, the thingamee, the hair twirl. These are the details my waking mind forgets, but without them her memory might blur, eventually distilling her to a series of photos and anecdotes
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“People like to fill in the gaps, to paint their own picture, but no one really knows the truth of someone else’s story.”
“When I was twenty, if you told me that by twenty-nine I’d be alone in the world, with all my friends moving on, clinging to my job because it’s the only solid thing—” I let out a sigh. “I guess that’s why I have to believe the universe has a plan for me, because if it doesn’t, maybe I’m simply doing everything wrong.”
I wonder if this feeling of being stuck, of being left behind, has come from not traveling much these last two years—not stepping out of my own small sphere, not meeting new people, not seeing new places.
I should stop overthinking things I can’t change, focus instead on the potential of the day ahead.
“Not like that.” It is like that, but I don’t think it would be appropriate to tell him all the graphic details of my Ryan Gosling/log fire/sheepskin rug fantasy on a first date.
“I just hate not being able to ask her about it,” I say, my voice calmer now. “I’ll never be able to ask her.”
“So, to recap,” says Dee, “it’s a choice between perfect, compatible, available Jasper, who sounds fully into you and is everything you said you were looking for in a man, or hairy old beard guy, who’s technically married and runs away after kissing you.”
“Unsuitable men always kiss better, everyone knows that.
“You know, sometimes, when people are sad, they don’t think they deserve happiness.”
“I’m not saying you’re broken, I just— This quest for the perfect guy, maybe it’s always been about the quest, never the destination. Maybe you don’t really want anyone to fill that space in your life.” Dee pauses. “And that’s fine too, Laura. You are allowed to be enough for yourself. You can be on your own if that’s what you want. But at least consider that you kibosh guys before giving them a proper chance.”
She just wants everything to be simple, clear-cut, like life has been for her. She’s never been on a bad date, never felt lonely or left behind, because she’s marrying her first boyfriend. Just because I’ve been dating for years, waiting for the right person, it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with me, does it?
You must taste a place to remember it.”
“You know, love is not all about the grand gestures and the cutie meets, Laura.” I smile that she still hasn’t got the phrase right. “That’s the shiny book cover, not the story inside.”
“The human heart is like a flowerbed, Laura. Once the first blooms die, there’s room enough for something else to grow, but it will never be quite the same as that first flower, the initial thrill of seeing what your heart is capable of.”
there’s something about watching the ocean that puts everything into perspective.
“Do you know what happens when you don’t have your phone?” Gerry asks. I look at him, waiting for an answer. “Life.”
take it from two women with over a dozen decades of experience between us, there’s no such thing as a ‘happily ever after.’ Maybe a ‘happy for now,’ if you’re lucky.”
“Men are like woodworm. Once they’ve wheedled their way in, they’re almost impossible to get rid of. Even when you’ve had the wood treated, the holes are there to stay.”
sighs—“maybe life’s more about carving out happy chapters than finding a single happy ending.”
As women, we spend so much of our lives feeling obliged. Obliged to show up when we say we will, obliged to turn up with a smile, obliged to tell everyone, “I am fine.” But obligated is just another word for oppressed. The only person you are obligated to is yourself.
