Notes on Heartbreak

by Annie Lord

Do you hear me crying from where you sleep at night?

There are certain procedures I continue to follow, like looking over at a friend’s phone to see if the person who just messaged is him, and if so, is he talking like a happy person? Like a person with a new girlfriend? Rarely do I get that gut-punch sensation now that it’s November; instead, the feeling of loss has come down around me like a cloud, one that people would look up at and say, ‘Doesn’t look as though the weather’s going to turn.’

The centre of the world is no longer where she is but where her beloved is; all roads leave from and lead to his house. She uses his words and repeats his gestures, adopts his manias and tics. ‘I am Heathcliff,’ says Catherine in Wuthering Heights; this is the cry of all women in love; she is another incarnation of the beloved, his

There’s no one more beautiful than the woman who has taken a man from you. You want to possess her because in doing so you would possess what he possesses and be closer to him again.

‘He wouldn’t be him if he didn’t do those things,’

Perhaps no one ever forgets anyone. We keep parts of them inside us forever and they come out in the moments we need them. Like ghosts who can’t find their way to the afterlife.

It happens slowly: you stop saying ‘Happy Birthday’, you stop watching their Instagram stories, you stop expecting texts to let you know they got home safe, your computer forgets to autofill their details in on forms, you sign out of their Netflix. And once all the little things go, it’s the big things: no longer wanting to call them when you have a bad day, when your wallet is stolen; no longer thinking of them at Christmas, and after a while you probably stop noticing the breaking of all the pacts you made together.