I wish them happiness. I always did.
Clare Skelton-Morris's Heartbreak Seven
Today’s Heartbreak Seven guests is one of the women who takes pride of place in my book’s acknowledgements. She has scooped me off more floors - real and metaphorical - than I can count and her good-humoured patience back when I was asking unhinged questions like ‘after you broke up with X, exactly how many weeks was it until you were ready to date again?’ helped germinate the idea for Instructions in the first place.
So - endless thanks to Clare Skelton-Morris, not just for being here but for being in a thousand vital places before this. And to return some of her incredible generosity - do check out her Substack and keep an eye on her writing project - part memoir, part other very clever and beautiful things.
A big thank you to my friend and writer Sarah for inviting me to write this post for her Substack. I’ve been following her writing for years, a super fan from the sidelines, as her novel Instructions for Heartbreak has grown from personal reality to early creative idea, draft manuscript to edited work, to finally an announcement in The Bookseller and a reveal of the beautiful cover design. I’m so excited for Instructions to make it onto bookshop shelves in January and to hold a copy in my hands (on that note, I’m going to a plug that you can pre-order yours here).Â
When she asked me if I’d like to write about heartbreak for this newsletter, I faltered. I’ve been lucky to not have the rug pulled out from under my feet in the way that Katie, one of the main characters in Instructions, experiences, but the more I reflected - making notes in my phone and scribbling thoughts on the backs of menu - yes, I could write about heartache, if not the classic heartbreak.Â
This is a piece about when you’re the one that does the hurting, rather than the one that’s hurt, the one to break a heart rather than the one piecing theirs back together. This has been an uncomfortable piece to write, like scratching at an old scab that has long since healed; I don’t come off well and there’s guilt that comes with being the one to call time on a relationship and how you handle that.Â
From our early years, we’re taught not to hurt others, and being the person that causes someone else pain carries with it guilt, embarrassment, and shame. You relinquish any owning or control of the narrative; you become the person that did the wrong and you need to stand by that.Â
But, what about the similarities between the breaker and the broken? Surely there are some, even if they’re in a different way and you’re the one to have made them happen. You’re still mourning the end of something, you still have to navigate the same path of nostalgia, pour balm on pain, and rewrite memories which now need to be filtered through a new lens. There might be the loss of friendships, the loss of the life you had, a loss of a home maybe and an extended family you were brought into - and all of this of your own doing.Â
Crucially, I think, there are still the same visceral moments when something makes you realise with a jolt that you’re no longer with that person. Both kinds of heartbreak experience the same jolting pang when you catch the scent of someone you once loved on a stranger, or hear the intro to a song that once meant something. The heart can’t distinguish between who did what: all it knows is the short circuit between the senses and the pain of a love that once was.Â
When I bumped into an ex-boyfriend a couple of years ago, it was the first time we’d seen each other in the eight years since I’d called time on the relationship. Unlocking my bike with a friend, I sensed something and looked up, seeing a face I’d not seen for a long time. He walked over, arms open, and I felt bile rise in my gullet. Afterwards, my friend held onto my forearm as we walked away. Are you ok? she asked You look like you’re about to be sick - and I cycled home later, my mind spinning, then sent a text to the group of oldest friends: you will not fucking believe who I just bumped into. The following day in the swimming pool, the light made diamonds on the tiles and I felt an ache in my shoulder, my calves, my chest. Everything hurt. There was music being piped through the speakers and a song came on that I hadn’t heard for a long time. Just a small town girl the lyrics went, and I dipped my head under the water, into nothing but the blanket of blue noise. Living in a lonely world. We used to drive to it, singing along in his car, his hand at the top of my thigh on the motorway up to Dublin; after we broke up, I would leave dancefloors when it came on. The solo guitar riff now sounds cheaper than it used to, and I swam on, wishing for silence and open air.
Years later, when I woke up early on a weekend away with friends, I lay in the early light of a purple dawn, thinking about what I’d write for this piece. I can count previous relationships quickly and easily on a couple of fingers but, even now, a hot flush forms on the base of my neck and throat when I think of the times I was callous and careless with others. On the train home from that weekend away, I dredged through my gmail for old messages, amazed that this glass rectangle that I carry with me everywhere holds conversations from another lifetime ago, written by a distant memory of myself. I want to take that familiar girl under my arm and shake her gently: what the fuck are you doing, babe? I want to say. I still follow some of those people on Instagram, see their lives, their wives, their babies and bike rides. I’d like to sit in the pub with some of them, and apologise for the stupidity of things done over a decade ago. Like a heartbreak, there’s still an ache that time can ease but not extinguish. Even though it’s years ago, more than anything, I wish them happiness. I always did.Â
1. Something to read
Something that will bring you comfort. When my head is buzzing and too full, I return to books that I’ve already read, finding it easier to not need to anticipate the unexpected. I find stories of travel reassuring: Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, Cheryl Strayed’s Wild and Tim Butcher’s Blood River will take you somewhere else from where you are now.
2. Something to listen to
Desert Island Discs - from the very opening bars of the theme tune, there’s a lot of comfort to be found in the extensive catalogue of the lives, losses and loves of others. If you need a sob, I recommend listening to interviews with Richard E Grant or Patrick Grant.
3. Something to watch
Glow Up. Now, I’ve done pretty much the same thing with my face for the past two decades so I’m far from a make-up aficionado but I’m fully invested in all six series of this programme. I can get lost in the various challenges: will the MUAs (that’s Make-Up Artists, if you aren’t familiar with the lingo) be able to create the looks for the stage show of The Lion King? Can they deliver runway models for the London Fashion Week catwalks? Who will crumble doing a sequinned lip in the Face Off head-to-head? It’s silly and fun but I love the genuinely transformative role that makeup has had in the lives and identities of the contestants.
4. Something to eat
Your greens.
5. Something to drink
A dirty martini. I’d love to say something virtuous and that’s going to bring you health, but sorry, no. There’s something medicinal in the painful bite of a drink like this - Sarah has written a guide here.Â
6. Somewhere to go
To a place you feel most yourself. For me, that’s a loop in the village I’m from, so familiar to me I could do it in my sleep. I know where the track rises and where you first see the village across the other side of the river, and I’ve walked it alone and with friends, in the rain and in the middle of summer when the sand martins have looped overhead.
7. A bonus seventh - balm for a broken heart
Running. I’ve had my own little love affair with the healing power of running for almost fifteen years, and it’s seen me through break-ups, losses, picked me up when I’ve felt low, and given me big highs. Even if it’s the last thing I feel like doing, I never regret it.
All photos provided by Clare Skelton-Morris.