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Why Are Love Stories So Terrifying?
This month, I have been inhaling love stories. Where I am in my life right now, keeping an eye on middle-age as it lurks in from stage left, this is new. Or more accurately, it’s old. Love stories feel a bit nostalgic.
Love stories have not kept me awake in about half a decade.
They no longer swarm my anxious head at witching hour. Nor do they get my attention on an evening screen, when I’m settling into some cinematic respite, tea and chocolate on hand. No, that slot is now filled by hardened spies who have fallen into enemy territory. Or microchips that have been stolen by foreigners on motorcycles. Or true criminals, whose minds and motivations I must mine via second-hand interviews. Or simply the news. Ah yes, the endless enthral of real life disaster. But love? Oh no. I’m an adult now. No time for such frivolity. I have a mortgage. Inflation.
However, over the last four weeks, I have been inhaling love stories. I have wept at 2am in grief over a person who only ever existed on paper. I have sat on my children’s bedroom floor, surrounded by dolls neatly organised into family units of four, reading letter after letter of heartache. All addressed to another Dolly, a journalist at the Sunday Times, in the hopes that she can balm their pain. ‘Dear Dolly. Please see me, please ease me’ they…
