How to mend your heart

Oh God, the biggest cliché of all. Over the past few months I've read a hundred articles about dealing with loss, change and people leaving. These are the things that so far have proven useful:

1. Feel all the things. Don't hold back. If you need to cry every day for five weeks, do it. Get it out your system and acknowledge everything that's going on in your mind. You owe it to yourself to be honest (especially if he wasn't honest with you.)

2. Eat what you want, do what you want. Fuck it. Your life and your body belong to you. And you can spend your time doing whatever YOU choose to do. If you want to stay in bed for three days, do it. If you want to drink gin every day, do it. If you want to listen to Beyoncé and dance around in your pants, do it. There are no rules. This evening I drank champagne and ate a scone slathered in cream and jam, just because I bloody well could.

3. Try to brush your hair, wash your face and brush your teeth every day. This step is much trickier than it sounds... I'm genuinely sorry for anyone who was within view of me December through to February. I hummed.

4. Find other reasons to get up in the morning. I literally used to message or call my ex first thing in the morning and last thing at night. It was how I framed my days for the last six years, and obviously when that initially vanished I was terrified. Now I try and meditate early in the day to ground myself. It doesn't always work, but it's good to try. If you're at rock bottom the only way is up. I haven't quite mastered the art of switching off in the evenings yet, but I'm getting there. In the mean time 3am can be for writing, planning adventures and watching crap TV. Who needs sleep anyway?

5. Sleep.You need the downtime without that anxious chatter in your brain to recover and feel strong again. Even if that means you need to have a nap every day when you get home from work, do it.

6. Explore. On the days when you're feeling brave enough, go on adventures. Visit the seaside. Go to your happy place. I've been following my spontaneity which has so far resulted in trips booked to Berlin, Bali and Brighton and who knows where beyond... I'm trying to let my instincts guide me which is fun.

7. Be yourself. Do things that remind you of the person you were before you met the arse who broke your heart. For me that means writing and creating stuff. You suddenly realise when you find yourself coming out of a relationship how much you bent and changed to be with the other person. Only in subtle ways perhaps, but undoubtedly so. I'm fully embracing every inch of me. And I bloody love it.

8. Run. Move. Swim. Do something physical to channel all that hate and anger that fills every inch of your body. It's like fire in your belly, and if you don't burn it out it'll only grow and manifest in ugly ways.

9. Let other people in. Especially your Mum. Let her look after you. You're feeling vulnerable and you need someone to remind you to leave the house, or just hold you until it hurts less. My Mum has text or called me every day for the last three months to tell me she loves me and to reassure me. Through being alone I've found the capacity to let other people closer into my life. It's no exaggeration to say that my friends and family have been my lifeline. I've put more energy into those relationships and in return I've had a lot of laughs, delicious food and bottomless glasses of wine. And spooning your best friend is just as good (if not better) than spooning your boyfriend.

10. Meditate. Breathe. Just be. You'll be spending a lot of time reminiscing about the past, and day dreaming about the future you'll no longer have together that you've spent years dreaming up. So it's important to remember to be truly present and acknowledge what's currently physically happening around you.

11. Write him letters: Angry letters. Sad letters smudged with tears. Hopeful letters dreaming of the better days. Tell him what for, in the hope that it will make him feel bad about the dumb choices he made. Say all you need to say and then keep them. I wrote about 30 letters and only sent one —the best one— where I felt valid, and said all I needed to say and nothing more. It doesn't matter that he won't read them. But it will help you feel heard and get those ideas out of your head and onto paper. You'll need that brain space for doing really cool independent lady things very soon.

Table Talk

“Why do we mourn celebrities?” I ask Toby over our last mouthfuls of dinner.

“Why do we glorify them?” He so aptly responds.

This question, prompted by the sudden death of Peaches Geldof, baffles me.

Image by Cvrcak1 via Flickr

Rewind to 22nd January 2008. My best friend Emma phones me up whilst I’m getting ready for school. “Oh my god. My mum’s just told me that Heath Ledger’s dead.” We’re both heart-broken. After adoring him on-screen from our early years of adolescence, we spent hours gazing into his eyes, imagining what it’d be like to kiss him (be it Patrick Verona from Ten Things I Hate About You, William from A Knight’s Tale, or even The Joker… he was sexy okay.) I even made a selotaped shrine in my school diary: photo’s, a quote, the date of his birth and death. I probably wore black for a week and a little more eyeliner.

And when I think of his passing, I still feel sort of sad. I’m sad we didn’t get to see all the other brilliant films he might have made, or see him grow up. We are the public, we watch them change, get fat, grow old and wrinkly, and we pass silent judgement. It’s what society does. But we’re also people, we are compassionate, and we like to put ourselves in other peoples shoes, and share in their joys and triumphs, as well as their darker moments.

Image by Amaandassr via Flickr

I thought about writing a letter to his daughter, Matilda, then only three years old, and consoling her. I thought about telling her about how that now I was older I still missed my own Dad, and that you never really forgot some of the small details - that I still remembered little chunks that me and my Dad shared together. The way he dried my hair. The day he found my blanket in the road on his way home & picked it up because it sort of looked like mine, just in case. How he knitted the holes up for me in a clunky way in the wrong shade of orange. I felt like writing down the advice that my Aunt had given me as a child, telling Matilda that even though it was painful, losing my father would make me an emotionally strong and compassionate human being in the long run. It wouldn’t be better, it would be different, but it would be okay.

Why do we glorify them? We spend a lot of time consuming things that they do: films, music, sports, TV shows. Sometimes we spend more time concentrating on them, than we do on actual real human beings in our immediate surroundings. How many times have I sat beside Toby watching a film, and analysed every inch of Joaquin Phoenix’s face blown up 10ft tall on a cinema screen?  I’ve listened to Paolo Nutini on repeat, headphones plugged in, blocking out all other sounds completely, listening only to his voice soothe my woes or cheer up my day. I’m not saying it’s bad either; I love music and art, TV shows and films, and I admire the people who we create them, but we invest so much in them. So much so, that sometimes we forget that we don’t really know these people at all. We think we do, but we don’t really, not at all.

I guess we mourn celebrities because we glorify them. That’s the simple answer. I guess it’s not really that simple at all. The heartbroken sixteen year old in me still wants to have a little cry for Heath Ledger. And maybe that’s alright. Then there’s another more adult voice in my head that says, “You didn’t know him.”