Maggie Pie

This was written in April 2025. To be honest, I’m not sure if I feel this way anymore (please read my last article to understand why xxx). But it’s interesting to look at how it feels to cling onto something you no longer have, perhaps in the absence of it. Anyway, here goes, brb: 

I can’t stop thinking about my ex. I thought it was possibly a bit of ‘anniversary effect’, but I really can’t stop thinking about him. It’s not particularly in a ‘missing him or us’ way, but I was hit with sadness over how he treated me. Asking me to shave my arm hair. Telling me I’d look better if I bleached my hair and fake tanned. Countless things he wanted to change about me that I hadn’t thought of about myself. I’d have never wanted any part of him to change. I think it’s those parts that stick. 

I’ve tried to move on and not miss the companionship full stop. It was never overly about having a partner when I was with him. It was about being with him. Someone with whom you have so much to talk about that you’re constantly interrupting each other excitedly to say the next thing. Someone with whom you have so much in common that you have to write a list to remember everything that you want to do together. Someone you just want to plain old stare at because you feel as though someone crafted their face for your eyes only. 

I could go over and over arguments we had, try to analyse what I could have done differently. I think the harsh reality is: I wasn’t to him what he was to me. For me, it was love. I didn’t even see other people when I was with him (I don’t mean in a dating-other-people way – he was literally the only man I really saw). Everyone else was just an extra. And who pays attention to extras when there is a star among us? Maybe someone is friends with an extra and has gone to watch the film to see them. But when someone is special to you, they are the star. So, point proven. Ha.

To me, he was kind of everything. Everything I wanted with bits added in, which heightened it all. To him, maybe I was a girl in the right place at the right time. I picked well for me, and I was hurt by him picking badly for him. 

It hurts that what was special to me and us might be recreated with someone new, better. 

I know everyone is different, I shouldn’t compare. But thinking of him being happier with someone, able to do things that he couldn’t do for me (like go to the dentist because there was some bad gum disease going on there), it kinda kills. I mourn for my past self, I mourn for her love but also her ideals of love. The fact that she has only memories left and some obscure birthday cards that she’ll never throw away (might just be because I’m a hoarder though). I got upset on the tube today thinking about things I had made being thrown in the bin. 

It’s been well over two years, completely reasonable for someone to start seeing other people. I just can’t get over it. It’s not even just him. It’s being that open with someone, that vulnerable. I’d never let myself do it before. I’d always hold my guard up, implant fences around my heart. I remember at some point deciding to let him in. I remember sharing parts of myself with him. I felt so confident in us. Now I think about him when I think about my favourite movie. I think about him every single time I hear artists that I loved before him. I just can’t un-associate him with these things. 

Maybe I’m a hoarder of memories too – of people. One of my exes loved Oasis and had a shoulder injury. I think about him every time I hear an Oasis song or someone mentions their sports injury. It’s hard to let go, it’s harder that we say goodbyes to people but all of our memories with them remain. I already knew I was a hoarder with clothes but maybe I’m now realising that I’m a hoarder of the past, immiserating the present, preventing the future. 

The word ‘hoarder’ comes from the Old English word ‘treasurer’ (and not in a financial way £££££). I think nowadays the word has a lot of negative connotations: to excessively keep or collect. My friends do often call me a hoarder in terms of my possessions. However, I think there is something innately beautiful and human in treasuring our memories, what we have. 

Me again, because isn’t that what life is? Experiences and being shaped by them. Experiences with others and acquiring a small part of them. I can stop hoarding my ex and the loss of it all but I won’t stop hoarding my awe at my own capacity to love, at the power of love and hope that it comes to me again.