Notes on Heartbreak

by Annie Lord

I can be glad that this happened so long as he isn’t OK.

Things glowed under your approval, turned invisible without it.

It was never something you asked for. I disappeared all on my own.

All I cared about was his success, his rightness. Yes, I was hidden, but in many ways I felt like I was exactly where I was always meant to be, where women are meant to stand. It’s like Little Dog asks in Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: ‘Why did I feel more complete while reaching for him, my hand midair?’ We’re not that into

But I missed out that it is usually the woman who adjusts to the man. He stays the same. I gave him my arms and my legs and he ran away with them and I don’t know how to get them back.

When a man isn’t including the woman who loves him, ‘everything he sees, he steals’, says Simone de Beauvoir, so much so that the woman in love becomes jealous of sleep as the man travels to a place she’s trapped outside of.

I think about him doing stuff to me that I didn’t even know I wanted people to do to me. He kind of repulses me but in a hot way.

What if, what if, what if. Knowing what went wrong between us doesn’t make me feel better. It encourages the small, noisy part of myself that’s always saying I should have tried harder.

He doesn’t look like the man I want to end up with, so there’s a recklessness to our interactions.

it wouldn’t matter to me because losing him is something I would need to happen at some point anyway. But then maybe that’s precisely why it would be bad for it to end, because I only feel comfortable around people I’m not scared will leave.

I thought he would get rid of my what ifs but he just brought me more of them.

I get a strange sense of pride from saying that I’m going somewhere my ex-boyfriend will be because part of me still gains self-esteem from my proximity to a man, even if it’s one I’m no longer with.

This is the central paradox of love: it longs for closeness but the more you achieve it, the less you value what you’re attaching yourself to.

I feel small and girlish next to him, like his height allows me to become one of those fragile women I always wanted to be. If I don’t get him then his coat would do, the feeling of being wrapped up in something that smells like him.

aware that the flaws of this night won’t be able to be fixed but knowing that I will spend the rest of it trying to undo them because he’s the sort of man I go absolutely mad for.

For once I’m thankful for his disrespect because Josh will see it, see I’m wanted, when so many of my actions are of someone no one would want

Think about how strange it is that so much of human touch is driven by intuition alone with no awareness of what the other person actually feels, only what you think would feel nice. I suppose that’s what makes it so intimate, touching someone how you would like to be touched, as though their body had become the same thing as yours.

Love is closeness, desire requires distance, and I am so, so far away from getting Josh, always have been. It’s hard to say how much I actually like him and how much I like the untraversable gap he places between us because of what it promises.

A part of me feels it’s my fault this has happened, as if by looking for him everywhere I’ve somehow managed to summon his appearance.

My mature attitude has now faded to the point where I’m dying to be told I’m prettier than her.

I bet she thinks she’s political because she posts infographics on her Instagram stories.

But I didn’t go to them because we have different friends for different things and I didn’t want to confront this interpretation of events. Instead, I went to Vicky who I knew would go low with me so I had someone to accompany me in my awfulness.

I can’t cope with the idea that something might have been wrong with me. Women aren’t good at taking criticism. Perhaps because we’re not allowed to be anything but perfect in order to be valued. Men can be all types of wrong and still be wanted.

‘Don’t say sorry. My feminism doesn’t include women that date men I’ve gone out with.’

‘What I’m trying to say is, there comes a point where you just have to snap out of it. Maybe it’s time for you to do the same? Your friends are going to be bored of you soon if he’s all you’re going on about.’

But I’m beginning to understand that even if I crack the code, it would still be over, there’s still no back we could return to. I used to find it frustrating that when it comes to the universe you can’t change what has already happened. But right now, this fact starts to feel kind of reassuring as it shows there’s no point endlessly contemplating tactics for sorting it all out because you couldn’t fix it even if you tried.

Instead of being the defining feeling that dictates my life, heartbreak starts to become something ordinary that I just have to endure, a sensation like those others – granted, one I will have to endure for longer, but no more or less exceptional.

I’m understanding there’s not one ‘over’. Nothing snaps into place in a moment. There are just lots of small ‘overs’ where gradually you start to understand that you won’t be how you used to be anymore, and maybe that’s OK because maybe the new you will be all right too.

and although we’re the same thing I see that we can talk to each other even if I will always know what’s coming because she, her, me, is the only thing I can count on to be there for the whole of my life.

To order expensive takeaways, and go on walks, and watch films that are difficult to understand, because this life could be gorgeous if only I gave myself permission to allow it.

Why did he get to walk over the world as if so little bothered him?

I was trying to make his life easier, but I could tell he’d rather have done without the help.

Sometimes self-care is not caring at all.

I thought love had to come from a boyfriend, but you can find it in friends too. They bolster me and build me up, and being with them is like being in a support group. Like having a bunch of sponsors you can call on when they’re needed.

I thought about how excited I always am to tell her a good piece of news or get her view when a crisis happens; how she’s still my favourite person to go dancing with. How her value increased, the more history we shared together, like a beautiful, precious work of art hanging in my living room. The familiarity and security and sense of calm that her love bathed me in.

It’s funny how often the future is just a return to the past.

I try to let myself have bel far niente too, to not think I have to earn pleasure, but that I just get to pursue it by virtue of breathing in and out.

So I load up A Star Is Born, which I haven’t seen because I always find that when too many people tell me something is good I start feeling as though there’s no point in me seeing it, as though I’ve already witnessed its greatness, or I’m not needed to confirm it.

There’s no uncertainty with me because I had no choice in the relationship ending. But he had to leave and face the weight of his decision, which means he’ll always wonder if it was the right thing to do.

Perhaps Joe and I can carry on loving each other, even when miles of air and experience separate us. Not in the way of wanting to wake up in the same bed. Or needing to speak to each other when something goes wrong. 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.

I didn’t see his evasiveness as a sign of waning commitment but just him being lazy.

But instead, I wake up each day at five minutes past nine, reach over with my left hand, which instinctively can find the mouse pad without me opening my eyes, and press it so that on Slack it will say I’m online.

I have all this energy now just from leaving him alone. And he’s no longer tired because he can do as little as he wants without someone persuading him to do more. Releasing each other might have been our greatest act of love.

I wonder if I offended someone earlier on at the pub or if there’s some political event I should have some opinions on.

I’m actually annoyed to have to mute her Instagram because I respect her opinions on liquid blush and politics, but there’s no other option because I don’t want to see his comments underneath her pictures telling her how good she looks.

This new man will run me baths and underline all the lines from the book he’s reading that remind him of me. And we will have a beautiful future together, the one he couldn’t give her.

I want to beg for him back, tell him I will become what he deserves. But I know if I make that promise I won’t keep it because I’m not capable of giving anyone but myself that time right now, that care.

‘Wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good.’

I know I’m not going to spend the rest of my life with you, but I am going to spend more of my life with the lessons we learned together, the person you made me into. So in that way, I’m so thankful we broke up when we did, because it means I get to spend more time with her.