Ana

“You’re too hard on yourself,’she said. ‘You can do long-term love. You’ve done it better than anyone I know.’
‘How? My longest relationship was two years and that was over when I was twenty-four.’
‘I’m talking about you and me, ’she said”
― Dolly Alderton, Everything I Know about Love: A Memoir

“Because I am enough. My heart is enough. The stories and the sentences twisting around my mind are enough. I am fizzing and frothing and buzzing and exploding. I'm bubbling over and burning up. My early-morning walks and my late-night baths are enough. My loud laugh at the pub is enough. My piercing whistle, my singing in the shower, my double-jointed toes are enough. I am a just-pulled pint with a good, frothy head on it. I am my own universe; a galaxy; a solar system. I am the warm-up act, the main event, and the backing singers. And if this is it, if this is all there is- just me and the trees and the sky and the seas- I know now that that's enough.”
― Dolly Alderton, Everything I Know About Love

“If you feel exhausted by people, it’s because you’re willingly playing the martyr to make them like you. It’s your problem, not theirs.”
― Dolly Alderton, Everything I Know About Love

“No one has ever asked you to make a floor-to-ceiling-sized friendship collage for their birthday. Or ring them three times a day. No one will cry if you don’t invite them to dinner because you don’t have enough chairs. If you feel exhausted by people, it’s because you’re willingly playing the martyr to make them like you. It’s your problem, not theirs.”
― Dolly Alderton, Everything I Know About Love