break ups part two
A year after the incident with the novel and J and the crush that became a tiny fling that became something I couldn’t drop, I wrote a memoir. I called it Sad Biscuits because J said I liked to consume sad stories like biscuits. I felt I’d collected enough endings now to write something. I spent a lot more time agonising over the 6 week fling than I did over the almost 6 year relationship. It was 2019 when it TOOK PLACE, once at his, a few times at my depressing house with strangers in Dalston with the yellow bedspread and then over because I sent a voice note saying, ‘by the way the thing we said about this not being intense, well it’s intense for me now so just wanted to let you know so you have all the information’. To which he replied, earnestly, with a phone call! ‘You’re so great how lovely to be so honest, let’s just be friends’.
I’d never get a clearer ending again. And even though I reeled and wrote letters (well one letter) and bumped into him in central London on more than one occasion by what I can only assume was the grace of god, and dreamt of him often and felt an imprint of him on me every time I went for a walk, and even though I had a whole playlist of songs written about this exact feeling, even though I wrote a poetry collection about this and found out the name of the new girl he was seeing and spent a lot of time on her jewellery Instagram page. Even though it was a madness of sorts when he returned to my yoga class on Zoom in lockdown and I felt, well surely this? Even though all of that, I cannot thank him enough for seeing something I couldn’t and drawing the clearest kindest line of all.
I wrote Sad Biscuits six years ago and last week I saw him at a party and we had the nicest conversation and he’s with his first love and they have a house and a child, and my god he’s lovely and my god none of that was about him. Anyway this footnote really is just to tell you, sometimes six years later, six years after listening to lou doillon singing,
it seems hard to believe
It’s still you
I’m talking about
Yes, wherever I start
I end up with you
You will get the understanding you never quite had in a wine bar in Soho and walk home with no tabs open.
But back to 2020, the summer of. I’m living in the top part of a tall Clapton house with C and F who were like my family for a while and now I dont know at all. (another Substack or memoir). And we’ve been through the endless summer of lockdown one that started in March and didn’t let off for a single day. I found out early on the phone that J had moved his new girlfriend into his flat. Strange really because wasn’t that my flat. I wrote a poem that I sent hastily to his unwelcome inbox about how the croc pot was mine! And how she now lived in the kitchen he once painted yellow for me. In the poem I wailed about her standing where I stood every day making meals that I hoped would be enough. He replied, and to be fair, I’m not sure I would. Something like ‘yeah I get to the point, nice poem’.
So I walked the perimeter of Hackney marshes crying like it was happening for the first time. Again. And the next day I sat at my tiny desk in the corner of my attic room and started writing Sad Biscuits. It was actually nowhere near the end of my era of hope and rejection (NOWHERE NEAR). But I needed to at least salvage some of the narrative so I could go on to have a summer fling with a boy I never opened my heart to.
I wrote the memoir in about two weeks flat. It’s all I did every day and I couldn’t stop until I’d closed the loops. In some ways that was one of the best things I’ve ever written. It was so pure. Heartbreak totally undiluted, a clear theme of unrequited love. The only issue is it wasn’t funny enough and given the chance again I’d add some LOLs. I just wasn’t actually ready to shed light yet. Even still, when I eagerly sent it to agents I had promising responses. It had been a year and a half of being single, I’d written a novel and a memoir and more than doubled my body count (even though half of that time was a pandemic). Not to mention my online lockdown boyfriends I never met. That’s a lot of learning for one nice girl.
I’d written without fail every day, I hadn’t even had my heartbroken again by the man who’d introduce me to morning pages (YET!). But I was doing it. I was the main character of my life and I couldn’t help but walk around feeling stuff. The house was a kind of unhinged harmony. Three of us entertaining boys on the apps and then regrouping on the sofa with meals we’d assembled individually to watch the OC. I genuinely can’t understand now why we didn’t just take it in turns to cook? But I think we all needed the same thing. Hyper-independence in proximity to other people. We got in moods and then cleared the air, took it in turns to be the one singled out, all came together occasionally, lived a whole lifetime.
That July I had a birthday party on Hackney marshes. I was turning 29. Andy took it upon himself to be on decor and somehow he and Beth put a gazebo up in the perfect spot by a big tree and coloured it all in with bunting. They wrapped fairy lights around the adjoining tree and hung a disco ball in the middle. When it was still light the park rangers (lol) came over to us in a buggy to tell us you’re not allowed gazebos and we gave them a piece of birthday cake and they let us be. Surely that never ever happens? I wore a floor length purple dress covered in flowers that I never wore again. Everyone came. It was really hard to get to because you had to stomp across a marsh to get there and there were no roads nearby but everyone came.
When it got dark the tree fairy lights came on and the disco ball had a life of its own. When California here we come came on C and F and I did a group hug dance. We stayed until it was pitch black and freezing cold and the grass was starting to get wet. I didn’t invite a single boy who I had a vibe with. I don’t know how I made it home. Only that we left everything and returned at dawn the next day on my bike with Andy to clear it all up. I was still buzzing, electric from all the life that was flooding into me.
NOTE: IT WAS SO HARD NOT TO INCLUDE MY ENTIRE LOCKDOWN CAMERA ROLE. TRULY YOUR LIFE IS ART.
NOTE PART 2!!!
I am releasing a thing today!!! It’s for the summer. It’s about writing your life. Writing for your life. It’s called THE STORY OF MY LIFE. It’s just gone live. I believe the start of setting yourself free is telling your story. Let me help you get there. We start June 1.
I could read this all day xx