They Always Play Love Songs When You’re Far Away

I’m sobbing uncontrollably, inconsolably. I’m sitting on the settee and I’m clinging on to two things as if my life depended on it. One of the things is a small cuddly hedgehog. The other is my mum. It’s breaking her heart to see me like this, and she’s trying to comfort me. Reassuring me. Holding me. But it’s not helping. The hedgehog isn’t helping and my mum isn’t helping. I can’t be helped. I’ve never felt like this before and I don’t think I’ll ever feel better again. I’m eighteen years old, and, without wanting to be too melodramatic about it, the love of my life is gone.

She’s not gone forever. I know exactly when she’ll be back. It’s just such an impossibly long time away. Three months stretch out before me like eternity. Three months without her. Three months alone. How will I face it? How will I cope? How will I survive?

I shouldn’t feel this way. I’m used to separation. I’ve had seven years at boarding school and, since I met my girlfriend last summer, two terms away at university. But this is different. Previously it’s always been me going away, and never for more than a few weeks at a time. There’s always been something new, something to do, new faces and places to get used to. There’s always been plenty of distraction therapy to help ease the pain. But this time, she’s been taken away from me. I stood on the platform and waved her goodbye. The world around me is exactly the same. But she’s not in it.

Before she left, she gave me two little presents. One was the small cuddly hedgehog. Hedgehogs are “our” animal, ever since she curled herself round my arm one evening last summer, and I told her she reminded me of a hedgehog I once picked up that curled itself round my finger. This one is grey and furry, and it has a message stitched onto its fat, pink, fluffy tummy. The message says “You’re the best!” That’s so her. I know she loves me, but she’s not one for saying so. Or even buying soft toys that say so. The hedgehog says “You’re the best!”, but I know what it means.

She gave me the hedgehog as we stood on the platform with tears in our eyes. Neither of us could speak, but we didn’t need to. I kissed her and she got on the train. We waved her goodbye, her mum, her dad, her sister and me, and her train trundled away. We drove home in silence, or at least, if anyone spoke, I wasn’t listening. I was gripping that hedgehog like grim death and trying to keep myself under control. It worked until they dropped me off, and I came into the house, and I looked at my mum, and I said “I love her, mum.” And I broke down.

So here I am, crying, wailing, clinging on to my hedgehog and my mum, and they’re not helping, they can’t help, because they’re not her. Time passes. Maybe minutes, maybe hours. Eventually there are no more tears, and I just feel empty. Numb. Mum makes me a cup of tea, the great cure-all, and I take it up to my room. And there, I open the second little present. The one she told me not to open until after she’d gone.

It’s a mix-tape. Of course it is. She’s picked a bunch of songs to tell me how she feels, to say the things she can’t. I lay on my bed with my headphones on and take it all in. There are a lot of separation songs and I have to read between the lines, because they tend to be “I’m sorry that we’re splitting up” type songs, like Separate Lives by Phil Collins & Marilyn Martin, or I Will Always Love You by Dolly Parton, rather than the admittedly more limited “I love you, but I’m going to Portsmouth do my basic training as a Navy medic and I’ll be back in a few months” genre. So I choose to ignore Dolly telling me “we both know I’m not what you need,” and focus on the sentiments instead. The pain of separation, and beneath that, the certainty, the absolute rock-solid conviction of true love.

The last song on the tape is Sign Your Name by Terence Trent D’Arby. It’s the song that starts me crying all over again, but it’s a different feeling this time. I know she loves me, and I know we’ll always be together, even when we’re apart. When he sings “time, I’m sure, will bring disappointments in so many things,” I know it’s true, and even though at my young age I can’t imagine what those disappointments will be, I know we’ll get through them. Everyone around us, in the weeks leading up to her going away, has been saying things like, “if they survive this, they’ll survive anything,” and they’re right. We’ll survive this, together.