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I Envied Women With Signature Hair-dos, Signature Perfumes, Signature Sign-offs. Novelists Who Tell Vogue Magazine: “i Can’t Live Without My Smythson Notebook, Pomegranate Noir Cologne By Jo Malone And Frette Sheets”. In The Grip Of Madness, Materialism Begins To Look Like An Admirable Belief System.

-Emma Forrest

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I Envied Women With

Emma Forrest

...

I Envied Women With Signature Hair-dos, Signature Perfumes, Signature Sign-offs. Novelists Who Tell Vogue Magazine: “i Can’t Live Without My Smythson Notebook, Pomegranate Noir Cologne By Jo Malone And Frette Sheets”. In The Grip Of Madness, Materialism Begins To Look Like An Admirable Belief System.

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More From Emma Forrest

There's So Much Guilt There Attached To Having A Perfectly Good Life.

Your Own Love Story? Your Paramour May Have Had Lovers Before You. But No One Has Ever Loved Him The Way You Do. No One Has Ever Heard Music. Not The Way You Hear It. The Songs Are Beautiful Vampires, Asleep In Your Ipod, Coming Alive At Night, Aglow. You Can Have Them On Your Hours, Yours To Conduct. Music Shapes Us And We Shape It.

What People Don't Understand When You've Already Been A Suicide And Pulled Through Is That After The Sadness Comes Fear: Where Is My Mind Going With This? I Don't Want To Die. I Do Not Want To Die. When You Don't Have So Much Control Over Your Own Thoughts, Over The Myriad Voices In Your Head, You Don't Know Where They Could Go.

Someone Asked Me The Other Day, "oh Your Story Is Like Cameron Crowe's, He Has The Same Thing Of Having Been A Teenage Journalist," But He Was A Guy And You Just Add Gender Into The Mix, It's A 16-year-old Girl With Adults And Rock Stars, And It's Tough.

Time Heals All Wounds. And If It Doesn't, You Name Them Something Other Than Wounds And Agree To Let Them Stay.

If You Don't Know Who You Are, Madness Gives You Something To Believe In.

You’re Like Marilyn Monroe,’ Ken Tells Me, Which I Take As A Compliment And Say A Nervous “thank You”. Interrupting, He Adds, ‘you’re All Velvet And Velcro. Men Want You Because You’re Sexy And Broken And When It Gets Too Rough They Can Say “hey! This Toy Is Broken!” And Toss You Aside Without Feeling Bad.

People Don't Know. We Don't Know Ourselves So We Tell Ourselves What We Really Know Is Other People. We Could Say The Depth Of Pain We Feel For The Lovers Who've Left Us Is Because We Knew Them So Well.

It's All In Her Walk, A Cartoon Swagger. Part Jayne Mansfield, Part Muhammad Ali. Men Never Know If It's An Invitation Upstairs Or An Invitation Outside.

He Was Addicted To Me And Now He Has Gone Cold Turkey. He Used To Send Me Fifty Texts A Day. And Now He Is Ignoring Me. It's Like I Was Once His Barack Obama. And Now I Am John Mccain, Conceding Defeat Like A Sad-face Sock Puppet, Knowing I Have Sold The Best Of Myself. He, My Electorate, Not Only Does Not Want Me, He Actively Feels Pity.

I Still Believe That You Truly Find Yourself Not In Travel, But In Other Human Souls.

Finding Yourself

There Is A Blessing In Losing The One We Love. It's The Blessing Of Self-transformation. You Don't Have To Who You Were Anymore. You've Struggled. And Now You Can Change. It Doesn't Mean That Bits Of That Person Won't Cling To You, They Will Throughout Your Life, But They Are Now Subsumed Into Something Greater. That Person Has Given You, In Fact, The Most Important Blessing, Which Is They Gave You The Blessing Of Transforming Your Soul Into Something Better, Something More Beautiful.

I Think A Neurotic Learns From Their Mistakes. A Psychotic Does Not.

I Think That's Such A Beautiful Sentiment. Love Should Only Last As Long As A Very Expensive And Impractical Bikini That Looks Stunning, But Dissolves In The Sea Within Days. So Many Pop Songs Tell Of This Terrible, Tiresome Love That They Want To Last Forever. But That Just Makes Me Think Of Long-life Milk, Acrid And Fake. Love Should Be Like A Movie Trailer. Even If The Film's A Stinker, You Get The Best Laughs And The Biggest Explosions In The Space Of Two Minutes.

If Killing Yourself Is Not An Option Anymore, You Have To Sink Into The Darkness Instead, And Make Something Out Of It.

Killing Yourself

Now That He's Gone, I Feel Like I'm A Senior Citizen Who Gave Away Her Life Savings Over The Phone. And This Is The Crux: I Never In My Life Believed In Someone As Much As I Believed In Him. The Shame Is Overwhelming.

It Is Madness. And If You Don't Know Who You Are, Or If Your Real Self Has Drifted Away From You With The Undertow, Madness At Least Gives You An Identity. It's The Same With Self-loathing. You're Probably Just Normal And Normal-looking But That's Not A Real Identity, Not The Way Ugliness Is. Normality, Just Accepting That You're Probably Normal-looking, Lacks The Force Field Of Self-disgust. If You Don't Know Who You Are, Madness Gives You Something To Believe In.

When You Live With Voices In Your Head, You Are Drawn Inextricably To Voices Outside Your Head. Very Often The Voices Work To Confirm Your Worst Suspicions. Or Think Of Things You Could Never Have Imagined! There Are Only So Many Hours Of The Day To Hate Yourself.

I Don't See What's So Good About Being Genuine. Clog Dancing Is Genuine. Isn't Being Fake More Of An Achievement? At Least It Takes Some Inspiration. Like, Sherbet Dips, They're A Special Food. Think Of All The Additives And Coloring And Grinding That It Takes To Create A Sherbet Dip. But Carrots? They're Just Out There, Shrieking, "hi, We're Some Carrots! Love Us For It!" They Never Have To Prove Themselves.

Of Course He Freaked Me Out. Of Course It's Nothing To Do With Me. But None Of That Matters. He Loved Me And Now He Doesn't. I Was Everything To Him And Now I Am Nothing.

Every Fear, Every Night Terror, Every Hour I Cried For Liev, Every Fight With Sebastian Is Registered As A Neat White Scar.

Are You Mine?” Yes. “are You Mine?” Yes. “are You Mine?” No. “no?” No. I Loved Being Yours. But Now I’m Mine, Which Is All I Ever Was, In The End.

Is It Needy? It's Not. We Don't Need Each Other. We Just Really, Really Enjoy Each Other. And We're Good Together. We're Good People Together. And I Have The Funniest Feeling. I Can Really, Truly Touch This All, This Happiness And The Sadness Too, I Can Trace All Of It With My Fingers. It Isn't Theoretical Or Distant. This Feels Like Me. This Is Me. I Love Him, And, For The First Time In A Relationship, I Also Like Me. Every Time He Says "i Love You," I Answer, "i Believe You.

I Wish I Had Been Less Keen To Inject My Own Opinions, But I Was A Teenager And Your Teenage Self Is Generally An Idiot Compared To The Adult You. That's The Way It Should Be. If It's The Other Way Around, You Have A Problem.

But I Saw The Pain And Sadness In Everything, And Swirled It Round My Mouth Like A Fine Wine.

A Lot Of The Time In My Recurring Dreams, Before I Was Diagnosed, Iconic People Would Either Be Good Or Evil Figures. I Remember Dreaming Really Basic Stuff Like Trying To Navigate The London Underground, But Then Paul Newman Would Be The Only One Who Would Direct Me To The Right Trains. And I'm Trying To Remember Who Would Direct Me To The Wrong Ones.

I Finally Accept That Not Only Do I Not Understand The Death Of My Relationship, But I Do Not Need To. These Men Were Good And Kind To Me, They Loved Me And I Loved Them Back And The Shock At The Finish Holds No Wisdom. The Revelation Is Not That I Lost Them, But That I Had Them.

It's As If He Can No Longer Acknowledge The Love He Felt Or The Pain I Am In. I Have Been Dismissed. I Don't Think I Was Smarter Or As Beautiful As The Other Girls He Did This To. It's Just That I Was Me. It Was All I Had.

Jeff Bridges Says That The Reason He's One Of The Few Stars In Hollywood Whose Made His Marriage Last For Decades Is That Every Time They Think There's No More Doors Left To Walk Through In The Room, They Just Keep Looking And Keep Looking Until They Find One.

Write A Page Every Single Day, Even If What You Put On The Page That Day Is No Good - It's The Only Way To Get Better.

I Think That's The Function Of A Lot Of Psychiatrists And Therapists, Is Keeping People Afloat Just Long Enough For Them To Get Older.

I'm Not Crazy Or Dangerous, Just A Bit Eccentric And Lonely.

You Want To Know, But Are Afraid To Ask, Whether Or Not I Found Someone. If There Could Be Anyone To Fill That Hole In My Heart After I Lost Him. I Did. "life Is Futile," Says My New Therapist, Michaela, "and No One Gets Out Of It Alive. There Is Only Love.

My Thoughts Are Messy, My Emotions Are Messy, My Body Goes In And Out At Will. The Raised White Scars On My Arms And Legs Are The Only Aspect Of My Being That Comes Close To Minimalism. They Came From Chaos, But It Is Hard To Carve Frustration And Unease Into The Flesh. Only Straight Lines.

No One Ever Loved You Like Him. And No One Ever Took It Away So Completely. But It's Here. Look Around.

I Think It's Sort Of The Hypothetical Point Where Communism And Fascism Meet. They Love Tragedy, And They Love Surface Beauty. You Just Watch It Play Out Over And Over In The Media. It Was The English Edition Of Glamour Who Were Looking For Stories Of Iraqi War Widows, But Specified That They Had To Be Attractive.

This Boy Has Negative Charisma. He Walks Into A Room And The Oxygen Starts To Evaporate. I Guess That's Why Girls Sleep With Him. They Find His Awfulness Transfixing. He's Like A Lousy 1970's Disaster Movie That They Can't Bring Themselves To Turn Off, Even Though It Is Making Their Life Worse Every Minute They Leave It On.

I Do Think Everything That Happens In American Pop Culture Sort Of Prescribes For England And Does End Up Happening There Six Months Later, Maybe A Year.

Let Me Tell You Something: When You Dance, You Are The Greatest Dancer Who Has Ever Lived. And When You Sing, You Will Have The Courage To Raise Your Voice To The Heavens, Knowing That You May Never Get An Answer.

When He Kisses Me, I Cry. I Explain It's Not Because I Wish He Were Someone Else, It's Because It's Such A Shock To The System To Be Desired After Feeling So Completely Abandoned.

Cyndi Lauper Was Hilarious And Generous, Someone I'd Loved From Childhood Who Didn't Disappoint.

You Can Have This Kind Of Love. You Can Have It. You Just Grab It. Of Course The Problem With Having That Love Is That You Can Lose It, Too.

I Would Say At The Moment The Only Person Who Could Have Played Me This Past Year Would Have To Be Angelina Jolie.

I Envied Women With Signature Hair-dos, Signature Perfumes, Signature Sign-offs. Novelists Who Tell Vogue Magazine: “i Can’t Live Without My Smythson Notebook, Pomegranate Noir Cologne By Jo Malone And Frette Sheets”. In The Grip Of Madness, Materialism Begins To Look Like An Admirable Belief System.

I Didn't Know There Was Something Really Wrong, Because Everyone Was Crazy. It's Just That Everyone Else Was Still Functional. I Didn't Realize That I Was Any Worse Off.

At Least You Know Where You Are With Blood. At Least Other People Can See It.

My Radar, After All These Years Of Sanity, Is Still Off When It Comes To What People Do Or Don't Mean.

It's Like He Has Emotional Amnesia... I Think You Have To Accept That The Person You Knew Isn't There At The Moment. I Was Witness To How Much He Loved You. I Have The Photos. This Isn't The Person We Knew. I Don't Recognize This Person. He's Shed His Skin." Her Heart Is Broken Too. She Has To Say The Thing That Will Give Me Back My Life. She Draws On Every Reserve. I See How Much It Hurts Her And It Hurts Me Too. I Came From Her Joy And Her Pain, I Lived In It And I Live In It Now.

The Truth Is I Have Had, For Whatever Reason, Several Movie-star Boyfriends.

I'm In Love With Someone Good And Kind And Gentle, And He's Seen The Darkness Too, But Somehow We've Become Each Other's Light.

He Was Only Twenty-five.he Was Young Enough To Miss His Youth Just As It Was Slipping Away. The Worst Kind Of Loss-the One That Is Happening As You Feel It.

It Took A Long Time, But My Heart Now Feels Full When I Think Of Him. When You Fall In Love Again—which I Have—it's Funny The Other Things That Come Back In With That Open-ness. You Have This Ghost Chorus Of The Lovers Who Came Before, But They're Benign Now, They're Good Spirits.

Falling In Love

There Is That Doll Dress-up Quality Of Adorable Teenage Girl Writer, And I Never Felt Either As Adorable As I Was Supposed To Be, Or As Dark As The Rumors, You Know, "she Must Have Slept With The Editor," And I Was Like, "oh My God, I'm Still A Virgin." It Was Very Strange.

From Such A Young Age, I Was Raised And Have Raised Myself On Film To Such An Extent, That It Has Sometimes Bled Into My Reality. There Are Times I've Felt Very Mulholland Drive, Where People's Dream Worlds Overlap With Each Other.

We Intersect. He Says He Thanks Every Star That We Existed On The Same Celestial Plain. But Here We Are On Earth, Dirty, Well Used, A Man-made Throughway For Intersecting Dreams.

In Other Words, It Was A Struggle With Himself. And The Product Of That Struggle: Anger, Bitterness, Resentment, Envy Or Transformation, Aspiration, Hope, Decency..the Product Of That Struggle Is The Quality Of Your Life And The Nature Of Your Soul.

Well. There Is A Psychiatric Occurrence We See In Men-not Often Women-where They Put All Their Hopes And Dreams Onto One Person, So Intensely That At Some Point It Trips A Wire In The Brain Circuitry, And That Causes Them To Go, In A Minute, 180 Degrees The Other Way.

When I Was Younger I Loved Betty Blue, And At The Moment I'm Completely Besotted With Angelina Jolie. But Sometimes I'm Unnerved By The Idea Of Men Liking Her. Because I Think That There Is A Side To Every Man That Really Wants To Watch A Woman Fall Apart.

When I Am In A Relationship, I Don’t Wear Lipstick At All. I Hate The Smearing, The Retouching, The Constant Throb Of Phoniness As You Surreptitiously Check The Damage In Your Compact Between Kisses. I Wear Lots Of Mascara To Compensate, Different Colors So I Don’t Get Bored. When I Am About To Break Up With A Guy, He Has Full Warning Because I Start Wearing Lipstick Again.

Everyone Asks About How I'll Feel About The Tattoos And Scars In Thirty Years. I Always Say: "i'll Like Them." I've Always Loved Damaged Monuments, In Architecture And In Humans.

I Like The Cuts - They Comfort Me - I Can't Lie.

I Wouldn't Say That My Emotions Are Extreme. I'd Say They Are Committed. My Moods Are The Equivalent Of Madonna's Dancing: Inappropriate But All-out. If I'm Going To Be Sad, I Might As Well Be The Saddest A Girl Can Get. And If I'm Happy, I Want To Be The Happiest. The Trouble Is, I Feel Highs So Ecstatic That Just Being Normal Feels Like A Thousand-mile Drop And Being Unhappy Is Excruciating.

Thank God The Internet Didn't Exist When I Was 15, 16. I Knew People Were Tearing Me Apart, But My God, If There Had Been A Net And Commenters And I Would Have Been Reading Them - It Was Bad Enough As It Was. To Grow Up In The Media Eye, I'm Glad It Happened, But That Was Definitely Not Healthy Being Around Adults All The Time.

He Was A Super Shiny Boy And I Liked The Shape Of Him. Under The Blanket. In The Shower. I Liked His Shadow On The Street And His Imprint On The Sofa. I Hated The Smell Of Hair Gel On His Head, But I Loved It On The Pillow. I Love The Smell Of Losing Someone.

Yes, I Have Patterns Of Love Addiction. But I'm A Woman. Of Course I Do.

I Enjoy Films Where Two Characters Are Coming Of Age, Just Different Ages. That's Why I Love 'paper Moon' So Much.

I Want You To Stay. I Never Want There To Be A Time When We Don't Share Space.

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