Notes on Heartbreak

by Annie Lord

Maybe I don’t need those gold twisted hoops. Maybe I’d look like a dick in those. Remove.

I get the ick – that sudden, slightly sick feeling where you find someone you previously thought attractive all at once extremely unattractive and everything they do is infuriating. Not because this guy got something wrong, but because he looked so pathetic when he realised.

because I accidentally imagined another standing naked in the bathroom waiting for the shower to heat up.

Before you, I thought you only got love if you were skinny, but you can have your cake and eat it and have a man too.

I have a to-do list and I enjoy crossing out tasks from it so much that sometimes I write things I’ve already done just so that I can enjoy the satisfaction of striking through them.

‘I mean, I’m not sure I do either,’ he says. ‘I just know I need to be on my own.’ ‘Why, though?’ I ask, shouting. ‘We were so co-dependent, it wasn’t healthy. We were always trying to fix each other’s problems. Then we’d get angry when we couldn’t.’

I was so secure in this love, I thought that he would forgive me for each and every one of those mistakes, but soon they all piled up and there were too many of them and all these tiny ones were enough for him to say, ‘I want to be on my own.’

I can’t stop thinking about how there’s no one there to know that I’ve gone for a bath, or for a walk, and as a result the act of doing one of those things, anything, starts to feel completely pointless.

I could tell you hated that about her, her loudness. You came from a quiet house where people nodded when they walked past you and she one where they shouted up several floors, ‘WHAT WAS THE NAME OF THAT FILM WE WATCHED THE OTHER NIGHT, LOVE?’ You probably thought her noise inconsiderate. She probably thought it rude not to speak to someone when you entered a room. You both seemed to think the other was being unreasonable and oftentimes one of you was, but you both had such different definitions of what was reasonable.

‘What about last week when Moll was keeping you up by playing the TV too loud? Why was I the one who had to go ask her to turn it down? You make me feel so guilty when you can’t sleep as if it’s my fault. And you’re always asking me to come sit with you when you shower and to chat with you while you cook. I’m not a fucking podcast you can have on in the background.’ Perel would presumably interject here, pointing out what we can’t see ourselves. ‘What’s happening here is your two selves have fused together. This makes you feel secure but also trapped. Now Joe’s self would like to free itself to a certain extent, without triggering the abandonment issues [because everyone in therapy seems to have abandonment issues] which you both have.’

Sometimes self-care is not caring at all.

Things can happen without you there and you will miss out. But it might give you the strength to be fully there for something else that happens another day.