Your Own Kind of Girl

wave crashing against a rock again and again and again, trying to prove again and again and again that I would not fail, that I was here, that I wouldn’t leave him. That I would save his life, without realising that it was his life to save, not mine. It was not my job; it is never our job to ruin ourselves to try to save the men we think we love. Never. But there were older forces at play: the guilt I felt about Rowena’s death, the desire to make it right. I wanted so much to save someone. I didn’t know it then, but now, as an adult, I can look back and see it. There it was—clear as day.

Although Joffa had given up the drugs, he had not given up the drink.

Two weeks after we got back together, he cheated on me at a nightclub with a friend of ours from school. When he told me the next afternoon, I cried and I raged, but in the end, after he begged for forgiveness, for one more chance, I stayed.

Maybe some couples come back from brinks like ours. But I see now why my parents were so upset. We were absolutely not right for each other. I would not want this for my own daughter.

It was a much better relationship than it had been—I will give it that. But it was still horrifically sticky. Just like my relationship with the church of my childhood, I felt like he wanted me to be someone I wasn’t, and I wanted the same for him. He was a quiet man, and getting him to open up to me felt like pulling teeth. I always wanted more, more, more. More connection. More truth. More love. More attention. All the things I felt I had missed out on last time, I looked to him now to repay.

Again and again, I ended my day feeling disappointed, and wondering what I was doing here. I retreated to a quiet room, turned to my diary, wrote out my feelings, then picked up my guitar to see if I could put them into some kind of order. Something that would help me make sense of them. Something that would reveal the secret language of my heart to the one person who needed to hear it: me.

I wanted a baby, you know. I played with that idea. What would it be like if Joffa and I got pregnant?

One day, after we’d been camping, I re-read my dog-eared copy of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. And I wrote these words:

I wanted to have his baby, but not too soon.

Through the roof of our tent I sent a wish to the moon

‘Please let me really know you.’

The clash of yin against the yang

My big fat love for a quiet man

I know you, I don’t know you.

Empty pocket filled. Empty hearts trying still to forgive.

I ask you to ask an angel for me, but you don’t believe.

Think I found a path—won’t you walk with me?

Said the fox to the prince: you tamed me, now I’m lonely.

These words marked the start of a new style of songwriting; one where I just spoke the truth, even when it was awful. I called the song ‘Empty Pockets’.

I didn’t play it for him, or anyone, except myself and, when I did, I felt as though I was getting stronger. I did, I got stronger.

Six months passed. Joffa was making an effort. He was doing his best. I could see that. He got his licence, got off the dole, got a trade apprenticeship, and then a car. When he invited me to come for a drive in the country with him, to go apple picking, I felt like my heart would burst open with happiness. This was exactly the kind of date I had hoped he might one day suggest, and now he had.

But when I showed up at his house on the morning of our would-be date and knocked on the door, no one answered.

I felt something shift in my heart.

I knew, in that moment, I was done waiting. Done trying to change. Done trying to make him change. I was done.

I wanted more. So much more.

And by now, it was clear: he would be more than okay without me.

He did eventually answer the door. He was not, as Frank had suggested, in the bed of some other woman. He had just slept in, he said. Sorry. He was in his boxer shorts, and while he had a shower I made myself a cup of tea and sat on his couch for what I already knew would be the last time. Although my panic was high, and Frank was loud with a particularly cruel story—that if I left him, he might kill himself, and it would be all my fault—there was something strong in me helping me float just a little above: helping me find the strength to say the thing I knew needed saying.

Joffa got dressed, held me in his arms, smiled at me, and I looked at him, smiled back at him, tears streaming down my face, and he must have known then because he paused, and he hooked his arm through mine and said, ‘Let’s go for a walk around the block,’ and we did. I rested my head on his shoulder, said the words; he told me he loved me but he understood, he didn’t blame me, I had stayed longer than he thought I would. And when we returned to his house, I kissed his soft pillowy lips, nuzzled my face into his neck and breathed him in one last time, and said, ‘Goodbye. Thank you.’

It was time.

You already know this, I’m sure, but heartbreak—the grief of a true goodbye—is not really something you ever truly forget. Even today, as I pause to reflect on that time in my life, I can still feel it—the ache of missing him, of wanting to