Out of Love

by Hazel Hayes

He stopped loving me a long time ago but wasn’t brave enough to tell me.

And when I get cold, I put the heating on, choosing to ignore Theo’s voice in my head telling me to turn it off and put more clothes on instead. If anything, the place is a bit too warm.

It’s just stuff. I’m just heartbroken. It’s just my heart.

How he’d been “miserable” with me. Miserable. I remember that word distinctly. It’s quite a severe word.

“You’re looking well,” she said when I sat down. “Thanks. It’s this new thing I’m trying where I don’t eat or sleep or think about anything other than the fact that I’m a struggling writer on the cusp of thirty with no partner, no kids, and no fucking clue what I’m doing.” “Well, I must say, it suits you.”

“What was it Nora Ephron used to say?” she asked. “Everything is copy.” “Exactly!” she said. “That’s basically what I’m saying.” “Though admittedly Nora did put it a bit more succinctly than you.” Ciara glared at me and I suppressed a smile. “Point is,” she said, “you should thank Theo for the copy and tell him to go fuck himself.”

The irony is we’re usually at our most disconnected when we’re grieving, either because we’ve lost the person we felt closest to or because we’ve withdrawn from others in order to protect ourselves from future pain, or to protect them from our “brokenness.”

Coming back to myself, to my body, feels like coming home, only to no home I’ve ever known.

“You can’t fail at a relationship. That’s like getting off a roller coaster and saying you failed because the ride is over. Things end. That doesn’t mean the experience wasn’t worth it.”

“I’m not sure it was worth it, Maya. What did I get out of it?” “You got what you needed,” she said. “And then one day it wasn’t what you needed anymore.”

“My point is, the only way not to feel pain is to never love anyone.”

Phone calls were made. Family members were notified. Condolences were offered. A breakup is like a death without a funeral.

They came to me unbidden—the good and the bad ones, the significant and the banal—and among the debris I saw fragments of a life I might have lived. If I’d just done this. If I’d just said that. I played out every scenario, every what-if a hundred times and more, and I never reached a solution. Because there was none.

I prayed to the only thing I knew I could rely on: myself. I begged myself to just get me through this night.

I thought, too, how like an addict I had been, how similar this was to some kind of detox. I wondered how much of the feeling of love is chemicals and cravings and dependency, and how much of the act of love is habit.

I’d like to tell you there was an inciting incident, a reason we ceased to function as a couple, but it was more like a slow, creeping disdain. In the end, habit was all we had left, and I came to realize that what I’d lost was lost a long time ago. For almost two years our relationship had been the romantic equivalent of a zombie—a walking, talking, undead imitation of us—and it was finally being put to rest.

Existence, I decide, is the cruelest joke of all.

The memory brought with it a remnant of hope, like a bittersweet aftertaste in the back of my mouth.

Imagine being so exhilarated by someone that a view of Paris seems pale in comparison.

Each time a character chooses a track, all other possibilities are erased by default. And I can’t bear it.

I am desperate to write. I know the words are in there—I can feel them piling up inside my head like water behind a dam—but

But there’s this paradox with relationships, isn’t there? The more time you’ve spent trying to make it work, the more time you’re willing to keep spending, trying to make it bloody work.

craving this kind of mundanity my whole life: a stable, calm existence that ticks along steadily without much effort. No chaos. No confusion. Just simplicity and ease.

I’d take joy with a splash of fear over fear with a splash of joy any day.

For better or for worse, I am my mother’s daughter, and her story is my story too. It’s mine to carry, mine to hold—with love if I can manage it—and mine to weave into my own.

“But the story won’t change.” “It doesn’t have to,” I say, “because you will.”