TO LET GHOSTS LINGER

Words by Sara Dell’Acqua

I often cry on public transport. The thing about crying on public transport is that whoever is around often feels like they should give you some words of encouragement. People usually tell me that “he’s not worth it”, that “I’ll find another one” and that “I’ll move on”. They assume the reason for my despair is a failed romantic endeavour, and everyone makes the next steps clear. I will and should get over it. Move on, rebound, get it out of my system, forget about it and do it fast.

Yet, before you are expected to get over it, there is a blessed period in which everyone around you happily condones most of your misbehaviour. You can drink too much, smoke too much and eat loads of ice cream or not eat at all. You can be horribly self-centred and only talk about yourself, you can stop answering the phone, you can refuse to get out of bed or start a ridiculous hobby. And despite it all, your friends and family will still give you a pat on the shoulder.

We treat breakups as catastrophes, and we are right to do so. From a psychological perspective, breakups are considered traumatic events and can induce a variety of “negative ramifications”, including post-traumatic stress, substance abuse, and poor physical health. Sounds like a walk in the park, no?

If you are under 25, the numbers are against you. According to a 2017 study, 40% of adults under 25 experienced a breakup in the last 20 months. I suspect I have at least a couple to go through before I pass the 25 mark. But there is some good news: breakups are something I am good at.

I might be better at the break-up part than at the relationship part . I approach it with rigorous methodology: I cry, I write horrible poetry, I make out with a few strangers, then I cry again. Eventually, I wake up, and I don’t think about them until after I have had my coffee. That, for me, is the mark. I am healed.

I am really good at being someone’s ex-girlfriend. I don’t text, I don’t call, and, for the most part, I don’t try to hurt you. What I do best, really, is this special kind of disappearing. And I’ll make you feel like you disappeared, too.

It’s a little routine that I do, the way magicians pull a rabbit out of a hat. I will shove you right into the hat. I am a huge advocate of no-contact because it works. There are times when I am just too neurotic to keep any form of communication.

A few days after breaking up with an ex, I woke up, went to get a glass of water, and as I stared at it, I started sobbing uncontrollably. Water reminded me of her too much. Just imagine the reaction I would have had to talking to her.

I had a friend who, in the effort of asking the spirits to free her from the memory of her ex-boyfriend, drew a pentagon on the floor with petrol and lit it on fire. It might sound excessive, but all breakups, if done well, are banishing rituals.

We throw away gifts, shove clothes into a bottom drawer, and delete pictures and messages. There’s no day like Valentine’s Day to draw the pyromaniacs out. Not so different from the pentagon ritual.

All we want to do is forget, so we perform all of these small rituals to get the ghost of the past relationship out of our lives. We pick ex-partners apart with our friends, we suddenly become mean, we throw the relationship out, together with the gifts and the clothes and the pictures. We scream it to the world: we don’t care anymore, we got over it. The ghost is banished, the ritual has ended.

Ghosts might continue to haunt you in ways your banishing hasn’t accounted for. They might be lovely ways too. My favourite book is “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”. My ex-girlfriend gave it to me, and I read it as she broke my heart. I used to be so mad at her, and we don’t speak much these days. Yet, I have re-read the book many times since, the same copy she gave me, with her note on the first page. Regardless, every time I read it, I suddenly feel calm and at home.

I don’t speak to most of the people I dated. It’s because, in less or more explicit ways, I rejected their attempts to be friends with me. The ritual, my ritual, does not account for much reconciliation.

Other people try to do things differently. Gwyneth Paltrow made something called ‘conscious uncoupling’ very popular. My friends have told me so much about “experiencing the break-up together with their exes”. Silly me thought breakups were about not being together!

I get why people try. The whole clean-cut-out-of-my-life deal feels insane. It feels unfair to just throw someone out of your life, and it feels even more unfair to be thrown out of someone else’s. Someone you cared for, someone you loved. Even more than a ritual of banishing, breakups are a ritual of discarding.

In my family, we are serious about rituals, and we are serious about breakups. If my paternal grandparents were younger, they would say they went ‘no contact’, and they would be the most monumental example of it that I have ever encountered.

I am 21, and I have never seen them in the same room, even though they share a child and two grandchildren. From what I know, they definitely did not consciously uncouple. They separated, old-school, and they have always been separate entities in my life. So distinct from each other that it feels uncomfortable to refer to them as my grandparents. They are Grandma and Grandpa.

Grandma lives in the same building as me. She walked me to school every morning when I was little and made me artichokes for lunch. She made amazing artichokes, sweet, savoury, and soft. Now, she has almost stopped cooking. Grandpa lives in another city. He would read to me when I visited in the summer and made the most delicious seafood pasta imaginable.

A few months ago, I was visiting him, and we were having lunch together, just the two of us, in his kitchen in the faraway city where he lives. In a surprising change of menu, he made us artichokes, and I recognised them immediately: sweet, savoury, and soft.

I am not suggesting my grandparents still use the same recipes for artichokes because they are each other’s great loves. But rather, your hands might hold onto things you wanted to let go of.

It might be good to let ghosts linger.