Introduction
There are a few things you should know before you meet Claire, Ana, and Patrick.
The first is that they are real people, although I have not used their real names. All names used are pseudonyms. And while this book is predominantly nonfiction, parts have been fictionalized to varying degrees. Human memory is not chronological, nor does it provide perfect dialogue or neat scenes. In the pages that follow, I have turned people’s lives into stories, and at times that has required artistic license. I do not invent plot and I have done my best not to invent feelings. Where memory has left gaps, I’ve filled the story with color that seems to fit. I’ve sculpted these narratives out of the clay that was handed to me.
The journalist Peter FitzSimons once said to me that whenever he reads fiction, he finds himself distracted by a voice in the back of his head that whispers, “This didn’t happen.” When I considered the subject of heartbreak, I knew I didn’t have to make this story up. If I’d tried to make something up, it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as interesting as the stories that were playing out in people’s real lives all around me. The plot didn’t have to be manufactured. It was buried inside most people I knew.
The stories had to be true, because within them would be nuances I’d never noticed before and realities I couldn’t have invented. I didn’t want to be limited by what I, as a thirty-year-old, happened to know about love and loss. I wanted to learn from people as I wrote, injecting wisdoms from different places and genders and ages into the pages of this book.
Long-form nonfiction storytelling, in my experience, elicits compassion and empathy most powerfully. There are few activities as intimate as reading a book, the words invisible to everyone around you. The characters and story lines might be dancing on a page, but they’re dancing to a song playing in your head. In the solitariness that reading a book demands, one is forced to reflect on one’s own life. After all, every time we explore others, we’re mostly just exploring ourselves.
Claire, Ana, and Patrick have all read the book and have consented to their stories being shared. I interviewed them—for the most part—while the world was locked down in the midst of a global pandemic, which made the logistics harder than they would have been otherwise. During this process, I was struck by the generosity of each of them and their willingness to answer questions I had no right to ask, to share with me parts of themselves that were vulnerable, and to open up about experiences that were painful.
They gave me one of the most precious and personal things any person can offer another, which is their time. We spoke on the phone and on video chat, we emailed and messaged, and when it was possible, we met face-to-face. They sent me diary entries and text exchanges and emails they’d kept. They shared photographs and videos. They invited me into their worlds—each expressing surprise that someone would find the details of their love lives interesting.
All three, at one time or another, thanked me. Our conversations were cathartic. Maybe even healing. There comes a time after suffering when our friends stop listening. Our family grows impatient. I tried to play the part of a living journal—listening without judgment. My very presence, I hope, told them that their stories and how they interpreted them mattered.
The poet and novelist Ben Okri said, “The face of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.”
And is there anything more imperfect than the decay of a romantic relationship? So, this is heartbreak, three ways. I wanted to tell these stories to put forward a new theory about heartbreak and the lasting effect it has on a person. It is only through sharing our vulnerabilities and the most tormented parts of ourselves that we’re able to discover how much we have in common. How alike we all are.
* * *
Claire is in her twenties and has moved to London to start over. She meets Maggie and they strike up a close relationship. One night in Claire’s apartment, everything between them changes and she finds herself caught up in a current she can’t free herself from.
Ana is in her early forties and is married to a man she’s been with for twenty-five years and with whom she has three children. She loves him, she thinks. She just sometimes wonders whether she actually likes him. She loves another man, and he’s been there all along.
Patrick is in his early twenties and has never had a girlfriend before. He meets Caitlin during a university group assignment and the thought of her creeps into his sleep and contours his conversations. Before long, every thought takes the shape of her face. He hasn’t considered that she might have a boyfriend.
Claire
The room smells like dust and sour sweat. She stands up straight and rolls her shoulders back. Click. Doesn’t sound good. Maryanne, her mum, keeps telling her to stand up straight or she’ll end up like that hunched old lady with the blue eye shadow they sometimes see on Ruthven Street. She spits back that she’s an adult and can stand however she likes. Then she remembers she’s thirty and living at home in Toowoomba and having an argument with her mum about her posture, and swallows down the lump in her throat that says, You’re embarrassing, Claire. Your life is embarrassing.
The head of the vacuum cleaner hits the metal legs of the chair and she resists the urge to ram it into the stupid chair again and again and again until it falls over. The vacuum itself sits between her shoulder blades and the black straps holding it to her body are tangy with the body odor of whoever wore it last. By the time she leaves tonight, the smell will have stuck to her cheap black cotton T-shirt. The kind of smell that doesn’t really go away, even after you wash it.
Copyright © 2021 by Jessie Stephens
