Notes on Heartbreak

by Annie Lord

I’ve come to think of my ‘self’ – my personality – as an entity that collapses when I am alone and unperceived by others; but then, as if by magic, when I am with other people, my ‘personality’ reassembles itself.

Want me down to the marrow … Sign my death with your teeth. We love, we fall into the jaws of the fire. We can’t escape it.

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.

How’s your life with a tourist on Earth? Her rib (do you love her?) is it to your liking?

What would it be like to be with a woman who was genuinely too much? Wouldn’t it just be luxurious?

He’s probably already met her and knows she’s not boring like I made out but rather the sort of girl who jumps through the Tube doors even if she knows they’re about to shut, eats three custard doughnuts even though she’s lactose intolerant, pushes to the front of the crowd at festivals and smiles even when the hot liquid that slaps her leg was probably piss, works outside in the sun even if it means she can barely see her laptop screen, who lives in a way that’s too much, because I know that’s what he wants from a woman, because he used to want that from me.

because this life could be gorgeous if only I gave myself permission to allow it.

It’s tiring, like when you’re a kid in the back of the car asking your parents, ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ because the destination never seems to arrive.

Sometimes self-care is not caring at all.

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

So, as much as I’m glad that he made me who I am, I’m glad that I’ve been left alone to be her too.

Releasing each other might have been our greatest act of love.