I message other nearly sort-of-but-not-quite men and try to build some kind of scaffolding of attention that will prevent me from ever hitting the ground. Yet, I regularly work weeks like this and my whole life is about juggling, so why, with a book I was enjoying so much, was it taking me so long to read? It was about 3,000 words and it was just a stream of consciousness of memories, a crazy mind map of what had happened so that I could make sense of it. I finished this sat in my friends garden, with a single tear rolling down my cheek, just before going to the kitchen to find everyone making pancakes and being quiet.

She acknowledges the stories we tell ourselves, and the stories they tell about us, and how the reality of two people is always elusive, or somewhere in between perspectives, or a combination. Charting her attempts to move on, Annie explores the ups and downs of being newly single, from disastrous rebound sex to sending ill-advised nudes, stalking your ex's new girlfriend on Instagram and the sharp indignity of being ghosted. By the end of her notes, Annie makes commitments to herself to preserve individuality, recognising how we might be able to keep aspects of our lives without blending into theirs or a collective “ours. It is a different kind of loss, and even though that is approaching almost 20 years, I can still come undone by a word, book or even a movie.In flashback scenes in the book, you’re still in a long-term relationship and you’re a young, freelance journalist trying to break into the industry. Enquanto recupera de uma desilusão amorosa, Annie Lord revisita o passado desde o momento em que se apaixonou pela primeira vez, as piadas partilhadas e a familiaridade de um relacionamento longo, até aos meses que viram a lenta erosão de um vínculo que estava há cinco anos em construção. I definitely think being a woman and being on the ‘dumped’ end of a breakup means you can get so much sympathy and support. Our interview is littered with sentences that open with “you know when you… ” which have the gradual effect of creating identification. It’s hard to balance your friendships and an intense romantic love, but one isn’t inherently good and the other isn’t evil.

um processo, muitas vezes longo, que obriga à desconstrução e construção constante de nós próprios até estarmos realmente bem. The truth of it is that this book was unstitching me, tugging at things I thought I’d dealt with and resonating with me to the point of distraction. Reeling from a broken heart, Annie Lord revisits the past - from the moment she first fell in love, the shared in-jokes and intertwining of a long-term relationship, to the months that saw the slow erosion of a bond five years in the making. It starts with the break-up and goes both backwards and forwards in time, with Lord trying to make sense of things. The film ends and Moll gathers up her laptop and the blankets she brought down from the room she shares with Danny.

And it’s through this inner dialogue that you become conscious of yourself as someone you can talk to and have a relationship with. I'm not talking about the kind you have at school or uni where you see someone for a few months and then they stop messaging, or one of you kisses someone else, and you feel a bit shit about it. The end of surprises sounds like a sad thing, but it wasn’t because even if you know exactly how a person will react to everything, hopefully in your mind the way they react to stuff is a way you admire.