Endnotes

I wrote this short essay some months ago and was initially hesitant to publish it. Largely due to lack of abstraction, I felt that it was too personal and exposing. However, some time has now elapsed and the circumstances have changed; both parties of focus are now leading very different lives. I hope, however, that it is still of some relevance and that it might resonate with those of you who read it. Thank you for your continued support.

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Photograph by Robert Capa, July 1943

Life without death would be unbearable. Death puts everything into context. It allows us to forgive ourselves of our inevitable mistakes, freeing us from the yoke of self-inflicted perfectionism as we remind ourselves for the thousandth time that none of this matters because one day we will be dead. Imagine, if you will, a life without death. Yes, our death anxiety would be alleviated – no more fear of ‘that day’ coming, of being involved in some freak aircraft disaster or simply never waking up one morning. But consider the terror of an everlasting life. An unbearable heaviness knowing that there is no relief, no salvation – that the suffering in this life could well last forever. Life’s context is gone. Consider Nietzsche’s idea of the eternal return – life simply repeats itself as we once experienced it, both the pain and the pleasure, forever and ever. As Milan Kundera wrote in The Unbearable Lightness of Being: “the idea of the eternal return implies a perspective from which things appear other than as we know them: they appear without the mitigating circumstance of their transitory nature”.

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It must have been around early March when she called me and told me the news. I got up from my seat in the middle of the carriage, sauntering in irregular movements as my body matched the motions of the swaying train. Half not wanting to disturb the passengers around me and half wanting to dispel the self-consciousness that comes with having a personal phone conversation in public, I made my way to the end of the carriage which provided relative levels of privacy. 

“Fred”, she said. “I got it. I got accepted.”

She sounded somewhat restrained. Delighted but restrained. It took a moment or two to bring to mind what she was talking about. But then – as the mind does when it scrambles for recall – the pieces came together. University. Studying abroad. Application. ‘I got it’. Paris. Next year. Termination of relationship. 

We had discussed the prospect of her getting accepted to study in Paris back in December. We sat over a coffee on a strangely mild day in Edinburgh – miraculously able to sit outside the reasonably priced fry-up joint on Buccleuch Street. As we exchanged presents and said our goodbyes before the Christmas break, it became apparent that we had to discuss the very real possibility that come the following year we would no longer be living in the same country, let alone the same city. So, when I received the call on that March morning moving very quickly somewhere in Northern England I wasn’t quite sure how to react. 

When a relationship ends mutually it is rather difficult to pinpoint the bounds of intention and disappointment. This is true both for the other party and within yourself. Unlike a dumping – which is generally a one-sided affair – there is nowhere for one to direct the blame, there is no guilt clause. A mutual breakup is a far more confusing, uncertain affair. There are no ‘fuck yous’, no ‘I never liked you anyways’ or ‘you know you’re actually quite fat’. Much seems to be left unsaid – a mixture of vulnerability and restraint. 

I sat there over my espresso, my right leg jumping up and down as it so often does. A gust of icy wind reminded me that I was sitting outside in Edinburgh in the deep mid winter. I explained how I felt about the whole situation, hoping she would understand. Indeed she did. By this point, I knew that long-distance relationships were not my forte. Past attempts had ended in failure and an underlying degree of mutual resentment. I did not want this to happen between us. I had too much respect for her. I mean she was moving to Paris for fuck’s sake, the city of love. This is all well and good, apart from the fact that I wouldn’t be there. I imagined mis-timed phone calls between the two of us: my phone would go just as I began tucking into my fifth pint of fizzy Scottish lager, whereas hers would as she was preparing to go out to some trendy bar with Antoine or Jean-Pierre or Alain or whatever the fuck he would be called. A prospect that no amount of convincing nor reassurance would settle my frustrated, cynical, Francophobic mind.

As with life and death, I have been given context, and I take comfort in this reality. The last few months of our relationship have undoubtedly been the best. I feared initially that it would come to resemble the latter stages of a leader’s rule: an overseeing of the inevitable decline, watching the clock tick down with a sense of carelessness and hatred for those ousting him. Far from it. The inevitable end – the finitude of our situation – gave me the certainty that I could make our last days together the best they could be. The standard procedure of a relationship dictates that it will last as long as you are up to the challenge. This was a thought that only intimidated me. I was too self-aware of my shortcomings and flaws. I did not trust myself to maintain the perfection that I was led to believe a relationship required. In short, I felt I was simply not up to the job. 

But for the last few months, I was attended by a firm sense of an ending. I could put all my flaws to one side for the moment and for the only time in my life I could put my heart into it. In miniature, life and death had been accelerated and impressed upon me with tangible force, and living had been made all the more real for it.