On loving, losing, and learning

I've never mastered the art of a dignified heartbreak. I remember sitting in a cafe in Oxford crying at a table and repeating over and over that I just didn't understand. It's possible to become foetal sitting on a small stool in the corner of a bar – I know, I've done it. You can stare at a gently swaying tree for a day without moving, without realising a day has somehow passed. One moment you're crazy about each other and then they say something which makes it appear as if you've never known them.

You spend your time playing games with your willpower. 'If I can manage to not check my phone for text messages for the whole day, there'll be one from him in the evening', you say to yourself. If you deprive yourself of that last chocolate, if you go to the gym one hour longer, if you leave everything in the room exactly the same – just perhaps, it'll all be okay. Just perhaps, it will never have happened.

And there are times when it seems your body has given up the fight entirely. It's not a conscious decision, but you can't bear the thought of eating – all you want to do is sleep, sleep for an eternity.

All the comments your friends make fall on deaf ears because, at that time, you're still in love with the guy. You know they are right but you refuse to acknowledge it. All that revolves in your mind is a never-ending reel of images: laughing together in a bar; curling up close at night; sitting on a park bench watching the clouds go by. The little things. At some point you know more about the guy than you do about yourself – 'you' have somehow become lost in the 'we' of a relationship, however brief. All your points of reference are to that guy: what you would have bought for him in the supermarket if you were going home to him; what programme you'd have watched if he was beside you on the couch; what clothes he'd have wanted you to wear for an evening out.

And it's all taken away, and you have to set about reconstructing – resurrecting - yourself.

Perhaps it gets tougher as you get older as your expectations change. At eighteen, you look forwards to a weekend together; at thirty, you have started planning a lifetime. It hits harder to have everything taken away. Children become faceless, and a house is taken apart a brick at a time. The morning goes from perfecting tea and toast and scrambled eggs to slugging juice from the bottle and scooping yogurt from the pot.

You know that you'll get through it. At some point you'll realise you have had a whole day without thinking about them and your heart will lift a little. A stranger will flash you a glance on a train and your inward smile will start to feel alive once more.

No, I've never faced heartbreak well. Perhaps because I don't see any shame in having loved and lost. But I will always admire those who can maintain a dignified silence, confining their feelings behind tight smiles until an evening alone comes along.

Perhaps loving someone shows us who we are, and a broken heart shows us who we can be.

I'm still waiting for the fairytale – not because I have been blinded by a Disneyfied world, but because I am human. Being accepted by another person, who isn't obligated by familial bonds, is a blessing by the universe. It shows you've done something right, that you deserve to be who you are. And so, we stumble around looking for that other person who validates us.

"It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning — " ['The Great Gatsby', Scott Fitzgerald]