Notes on Heartbreak

by Annie Lord

I remember telling him about the Kardashians and why I loved their show. ‘What actually happens on it?’ he asked.

‘Fuck all. They just argue over what the best crisp flavour is and walk around in £3,000 tracksuits taking turns to say how being a mum is the most important job in the world. It’s so completely empty of meaning I experience it like meditation. If you fill your mind with that much nothing, then there’s no room in there for all the other stuff that was stressing you out.’

Sometimes I worry that the more I want him to text the less of a chance there is that he will, as though I have hexed my phone by hoping. So I put it on airplane mode and throw it across the carpet. Seconds later I crawl towards it on all fours and unlock it again.

And we stayed like that all day in the sort of bliss where you start arguments not because anything needs to be resolved, but because the flaws make you realise just how perfect everything else is.

‘Since we have been together I have felt more uncomfortable, out of place, embarrassed, and just physically sick than I have in my entire life,’

‘Me and Danny, like, if he’s annoyed, he’s just annoyed. I let him watch those shit documentaries he likes called Russia’s Ten Toughest Prisons and when I’m in a mood I just go and play video games and he knows to give me a minute and we comfort each other if the other one asks for a hug or whatever, but we don’t think it’s our job to sort anything out. You must have been so tired, weighed down by the moods of two people. I reckon he was freaked out by how much he needed you the same as how much you needed him.’

I’m walking down Turnpike Lane high street with all its key cutters and those furniture shops that always have a closing-down sale on.

I can listen to Taylor Swift’s ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together’ at full volume and know that it’s women like me she’s written it for.

I suppose he didn’t so much miss Mary as the feeling of youth and vitality he had when he was with her. Granny stayed long enough to outlast that feeling. To the point in love where all mystery goes and you’re watching them being helped down steps. Not being able to hear even with hearing aids in.

But as a quiet love that endures out of respect for the impact he had on my life.

Perhaps no one ever forgets anyone. We keep parts of them inside us forever and they come out in the moments we need them.

Arsenal’s Héctor Bellerín

Her favourite song lyrics by Lana Del Rey about a man

fucking someone so good they declare their love for him are also my favourite song lyrics.