Perhaps I’m more attuned to it than the average person, but I feel like I’ve read about heartbreak more than usual over the past week. It’s the term myriad journalists, bloggers, commentators and – oh alright then – friends have reached for to describe their feelings at the death of Matthew Perry.
I’m not going to rehash here a piece on why his death has touched so many so much – plenty of people have already done that better than I could. I especially liked Poorna Bell on not letting addicts’ deaths be overridden by that, and Helen Lewis on ‘the most important man in my teenage life’.
But it has got me thinking about what it is to reach for the term heartbreak in the wake of the death of someone we haven’t met and don’t actually know – or least, don’t know in the way we generally use that word. Because of course the point is we do know these people – we know them in the way we know all celebrities – which is to say that we know them as ciphers, as ways, really, of knowing ourselves.
When we are convinced that we would be best friends with celebrity X or would love to have a pint with celebrity Y; when we feel sure that celebrity A’s relationships mirror our own or that celebrity B has experienced a personal journey just like ours, our imaginations are rushing in to fill the gaps. It’s the same mechanism at play when we begin to fall hard for somebody new – an intoxicating rush of possibility and hope and optimistic abandon. All is projected; all is perfect.
But it’s bigger than mere projection – it’s also about community. Feeling kinship with somebody famous means feeling kinship with everyone else who adores that famous person – even if the precise reasons for their adoration are different to our own. Such is the power of the fan club. We become less alone, and more ourselves,
We all, then, experience celebrities’ deaths differently, as Poorna Bell’s and Helen Lewis’s contrasting articles make plain. But because we are all equally remote from them, we are granted the illusion of commonality. We feel part of a joint and universal heartbreak even if, under the surface, we know it to be false. And there is comfort in that community.
I was nine years old when Princess Diana died – young enough, and from a family republican enough in its sentiments to have not been particularly aware of her until that moment. Suddenly, it was impossible not to be aware of her, the ghost behind thousands of bunches of flowers and tear-stricken faces on the news. I was aware that my parents found it all faintly bewildering. I remember hearing cynical comments about her complex relationship with the media in a way that I’m sure plenty of people would find tasteless or cruel in content as well as timing.
Because yes, it’s easy to be cynical about the connection others feel with a celebrity you don’t; to scoff at someone heartbroken over a death when they would never be invited to attend the funeral. But heartbreak is still, I think, the best term for those feelings. Of course I recognise that the ways I felt after the deaths of Leonard Cohen and David Bowie, Joan Didion and Tina Turner were different to the ways I have felt post break-up and post-bereavement. But they are different shades of the same colours.
Maybe our emotions when somebody famous dies are a way of practicing for our other, lonelier heartbreaks. A relationship ends. A loved one passes away. There are no fan clubs, then, to share in those losses, to cling to the idea that someone, somewhere, feels the same as you. There is only the other half of the relationship, and your wondering if they are crying too. There is only the sibling, or the parent, or the friend who also loved the dead, but not quite as you did.
How to heal heartbreak #4: (Re)make your bed
Assuming that your heartbreak is the classic post-breakup kind, trust me, this is the first shopping you should do. Are you sleeping, still, on ‘your’ side? Have they left things on the bedside table, in the drawer? Do the - oh god - do the pillows still smell like them?
We can fantasise about the perfect bed/rooms all day long - imagine looking out onto this view? I suppose these aren’t bad either. And next time I go back to Northumberland I quite fancy this, complete with stargazing window.
Digressing. Anyway, the point is that post-breakup is the perfect time to recreate your bed exactly as you want it - or rather, exactly as you want it now. Expunge all traces of the person you used to share it with. Buy the sheets in the colour they didn’t like. Get the headboard reupholstered in the print they didn’t understand. Light the scented candle that gave them a headache.
Remaking your bed won’t insulate you from feeling sad as you sink into it. But it will make you feel like you. It will make you feel like you have choices, and possibilities, and hope. It will make you feel like you are enough.
In the midst of heartbreak, that is a powerful thing.
Photos by NBC and Christopher Jolly on Unsplash