I was enjoying a lovely bit of dissociation scrolling, trying to smooth the grooves of my brain until it reached the same consistency as baby food. A fruity but happy looking bit of mush. I was at it long enough that time had lost all meaning, but not long enough for me to forget the ironing was piling up. Putting the hair straightener over the collar of my shirts might have passed when working from home, but it is harder to get away with as a TV reporter working in the age of high definition.
I was deep in the recesses on my Instagram. Past the one-pan recipes that I save but never make, past the clever explainers on trade tariffs and finally into the netherworld of posts from people I haven’t spoken to in the last 10 years. The kind who would cause me to panic in the supermarket if they said hello. We may never make good on plans “to catch up for coffee some day” but I genuinely wish them well. I look in on them occasionally like a benevolent non-interventionist god. One selfie or #familyfunday caption at a time.
If a girl I befriended in a nightclub bathroom in 2018 posts a picture with her fellah in front of a “sold” sign with the caption “so we did a thing!”, it’s getting a like from me. If the mother of my ex-boyfriend many ex-boyfriends ago (my great-grand ex? My ex thrice removed?) posts a picture of her creation at Paint Prosecco, you best believe I’m firing a like and maybe even a heart emoji at her story. Her son may have had nude photos of other women on his phone and tried to pass it off as “art project”, but that wasn’t Pam’s fault. And that is a smashing watercolour rendering of a sunset, so credit where credit is due.
But there was one post that caught my immediate attention. It was an old school acquaintance posting herself on holidays with the girls. She looked great and not in that annoying “ooh she’s lost weight” backhanded compliment way. She was radiating joy. She looked unburdened. She looked like the girl I used to know who was the first on the dance floor and the last one off.
Relationships even between the best and tenderhearted can still fail
The people who really care about you shouldn’t abandon you over tricky conversations
His leer was so filthy it would have you reaching for hand sanitiser. A man over 40. A man who knew so, so much better
I pine for my favourite Irish discount store. It has everything I never knew I needed
I did what any self respecting lurker would do and began trawling through her Instagram, trying to work out her secret. Had she had Botox? Was it Pilates? Had she joined an ecstatic dance cult? No, instead she had left her partner.
The siren call for true nosy people is when all the photos of someone’s partner disappear off social media. Gone were the photos of her at truck shows or standing next to a man in a river holding a fish. Just happy photos of her and her kids under #newbeginnings. She had gone travelling with her friends, she had finished her degree and she had taken up line dancing. “I’m proud of you,” I whispered like an unhelpful angel.
Because it was more common where I grew up to have children or marry youngish, many in my circles are divorcing now or are on to their second marriage/serious relationship. To the extent where my niece recently told me she was going to wait until she was really old, “like 25″, to get married.
While the splits have been painful and require constant emotional gymnastics trying to protect any involved children, I have noticed a lightness and easiness in both genders of friends who make the decision to separate from relationships that just weren’t working.
I have seen kind, mature people part ways with mutual care and respect because they didn’t wait to resent each other before doing it. They left when there was still a bit of love and they were the better for it.
Relationships even between the best and tenderhearted can still fail. People do not have to be “bad” for us to leave them. You can still cry yourself to sleep at night next to an objectively good person. It’s staying in a slowly eroding relationship, feeling like you’re not seen or heard day after day that will hurt you the most. The thousand small rejections that happen on a daily basis – the joke not laughed at, the silence on the couch, the hand not held – that will wear down your self-esteem and leave your shoulders permanently slumped.
It can be hard to begin again, especially after so many years and tears poured into something. But no one I know wishes they were back in an unhappy relationship. Plus, you never know who is on the social media sidelines, cheering you on.
