Breathe in:
I’ve blamed the neighbours. I’ve blamed the security guards. I’ve blamed the architecture, the car, the general lackadaisical emotional nature of human beings who believe they owe each other nothing and are entitled to everything. And at the bottom of the well there is one inescapable truth: it doesn’t matter what is or happens around you. What matters is how you choose to deal with it.

Breathe out:
Bottom line: I am thinking of you, and frankly I hate it.

Breathe in:
Last night all I could think of was kissing. How much I miss it. How I wanted to do it right now, right this instant. How insane the craving for fingers in my hair. And someone to sleep the night through with. Hell. Just being able to sleep from one end of the night through to the other. Some days I can dig myself a pit so deep there is scarcely little I can do to make my way back up. It is terrifying and soothing all at once. The dark. The quiet. The cool stillness of a space that defies time and dimension. If a pause were a room, this could be it. If I were a pause, I may never want to restart.

Breathe out:
It has become far too simple and easy a way out to stake claim on an illness, a psychological manifestation, an emotional imbalance, a chemical disproportion. Part of being grown up is taking responsibility for yourself and what you say and do. Or don’t. Sometimes I am completely overwhelmed by what it means to be an adult. I am simply not cut out for it. Just the every day shenanigans of waking up and going about one’s business and pretending at some level it matters. Knowing it doesn’t. Take a sick day. Take a week. The world isn’t going to notice. It’s not the world’s job to notice.

Breathe in:
Someone somewhere wrote that, “gone” was the saddest word in any language. I wanted to disagree but couldn’t come up with an argument or alternative. “Gone” really is an awfully sad word. It’s so terribly devoid. It speaks of absentia; of something hitherto, but no longer available. Of what very recently, was. They say misery loves company. I doubt it. Unhappy people are often alone and therefore, unhappier. I have considered that I have an obsessive streak when it comes to love. Robert Palmer FTW. But there is no romance in that. Crazed lovers are not easy, and they are not fun. They don’t make for good endings either. Given a choice, I would have preferred cocaine. Coke is fucking beautiful. You can go so far as to believe you are loved and worthy of it (worthy of love, that is, not cocaine). Even if it only lasts a little while, it s better than not believing you are worthy even of the worst love there is. Because we all know that some love; even bad love is better than no love at all.

Breathe out:
We are all brought up on a meagre and stupid diet of that “one big love story”. The love of our lives. The ONE. Extreme, bewildering, insane, overwhelming, breathtaking, forever, mad, excruciating, exhausting, timeless love. The truth is, it’s a load of bollocks. One is quite often three and that big love is more like, that-very-large-but-not-necessarily-gigantic relationship. My greatest failing is that I am an insatiable idealistic romantic. I have pulled out all the stops and therefore, cannot stop. Clinically, this is a problem. Realistically, it makes me something of a problem. Let me tell you this: there are few things in this life that feel as hollow as knowing you have nobody left to give to.

Breathe in:
Vonnegut said we live too long. It has nothing to do with age, as usual, but what we think we have accomplished, and how much more there is to do, or want, or attain. We keep thinking, “one more marathon, One more baby. One more book. Then I’ll be done.” I read this and I am thinking this is fucking brilliant, because really, people DO run marathons, have babies, write books, and still find time to be unfulfilled. Maybe even simultaneously. But I haven’t done any of that. I haven’t done much with my life at all. They keep saying, “write that book!” or “get in shape!” or “adopt a baby!” and I groan inwardly because I can’t function beyond one exclamation mark, and what is it that I am doing to make these people think I am even CAPABLE? Ironically enough, I fell in love with someone who ran marathons, and had babies but was incapable of being with me. #TWSS

Breathe out:
Somewhere this someone is thinking of me and thanking God it’s over.

Breathe in:
I want to hear you say, “I love you,” the way it sounds when your hands go through my hair.

Breathe out: 
Don’t forget to be kind, my darling. Everything else is rubbish.