The Great Detachment

Big dreams and big reality

This week, Thursday July 3rd, Bitter Sweet will be published in the UK. It is nearly two years since I signed my deal, so it has been a long time coming, to say the least. It is a wild and intense and exciting time in my life. And a lot to process, because nothing is as I expected it to be. It never is.

Do you ever dream about something you want, in a way that you can actually see it? A career, a baby. A man, a woman. A house, a kitchen island. A book deal, a job. A greenhouse. A lipstick you’ve seen on Instagram, maybe a pair of shoes. Anything at all that makes you want.

What it will be like to have it? Do you feel like you know?

Do you feel that having this one thing will change everything, that it could have the power to change the you inside?

When I was little, it wasn’t a wedding or a boyfriend I dreamed of. It was a life in which I was on my own, independent, doing something I loved and seeing the world. I don’t remember exactly what that looked like but I remember the feeling of it. It was a lot like this, although writing wasn’t a future I had considered then. But I remember wanting a big life so much that I couldn’t wait to get there. I wished away so much time, so much life, chasing. Always, chasing.

Flashes of my sweet, naive dreams; finding a tomb in Egypt with my brush and trowel. A curtain rising, me in position under a spotlight. Shouting in the House of Commons, my party behind me. On a beach in Hawaii drinking from a fresh coconut, with one of those little paper umbrellas.

(Why are children so fixated on Hawaii?! And cocktail umbrellas?)

Important to mention I never could ride this thing without stabilisers

What I want has changed a lot over the years. For a while, once I had moved on from wanting to be an archeologist or the Prime Minister or an actor, I imagined a life as a journalist, writing on a frontline like some female Hemingway, dodging bullets and bayonets and drinking with men in cafes in Paris late at night, telling them of my adventures reporting from the battlefield.

I was so stupid to think of war as glory and adventure. It is neither.

Then it became to just be truly loved. To be in receipt of the kind of monumental, all consuming love that I saw on TV. Later, that changed again to become a quiet life with someone, anyone really, who loved me.

I never again dreamed of living a life alone, because I was already alone.

Music was my next dream, and in moments it felt like I might find some success and a career in that male-centric, chaotic world where I was more often than not asked which one of the band was my boyfriend when I arrived for soundcheck. Watching Glastonbury over the weekend I was thrilled to see so many authentic women front and centre. It feels more possible now.

Today, writing this, I am unsure what to allow myself dream of. I have just done a live interview on Virgin Radio, and I’m waiting at Euston for my train to Manchester, because the book tour starts tonight. I have events in London later this and next week, then Brighton, then across the UK. I don’t allow myself to dream of a Sunday Times bestseller chart position, but I know that I will be on the radio again and that my face will be in the broadsheets of British and American newspapers, and my lispy voice across Spotify on many podcasts. I will see my book in Waterstones. I will hear from my friends in Canada and Australia as it lands on their doormats, and I’m sure I will feel happy and overwhelmed and. . . well. Probably a bit unsure really what to feel.

Because reality is very different and more complicated than dreams. Joy can be overwhelming. The irony of the very bittersweet nature of life is not lost on me.

I expected to cry when I first held a copy of Bitter Sweet in my hands. In my imagining of that moment, it played out much like it did when I had a call from the genetic screening company to say that the 11 week-old cluster of cells in my uterus were all fine and female, that I would be having a baby girl. I wept with such joy in that moment, having waited so long to get pregnant, and wanting a girl so much. I was sure it would be a similar moment.

But instead I found myself unable to open the box. I knew what was in it, it was clearly marked HACHETTE. I had planned to film myself opening it as other authors do, an ‘unboxing video’ capturing live tears on my phone to put on Instagram. But that isn’t how it played out. It was much quieter, and felt more private. I opened the box alone, three days after a stand off with it in my hallway. Isn’t that strange? I think it is.

This life is more than a dream, and that is a hard Big Feeling to hold onto when you want to hold on to everything.

In March 2023 I opened a new word document in a house in north Iceland, and that became Bitter Sweet. I had no idea if it was good, or a full story, or really anything of what I was doing. Had you told me then what was to come, of the ways the world and people would open to me, I would never have believed you.

Yet here it is. Real and alive and tangible and everything I had ever dreamed of. And at the same time, nothing I could have ever imagined. A life which I hope is tipping on the edge of success and all that goes with it — travel and love and friendship and pain and heartache and exposure and a new kind of vulnerability. Behind all that you see there is always a person just trying to survive, trying to be in the moment, trying to enjoy this life because it is, after all, all there is.

I’m so grateful to every single one of you that has bought a copy of Bitter Sweet, that has pre-ordered, that will buy one.

You never know what you are starting, not really, or where what you create might lead you. A few sketched words on a page can become an extraordinary and exciting life. All I know, is that is if you want to make something and change your life, don’t wait.

Everything you are dreaming of could come true.

If you enjoyed this, then please pre-order Bitter Sweet which is out NEXT WEEK — July 3rd in the UK and Commonwealth/July 8th in the US. You can find out more about it and me HERE. Pre-ordering is the single biggest way you can support an author. I will be eternally grateful!

BIG FEELINGS RECOMMENDS:

• The title of this piece, The Great Detachment, is an album by Canadian band Wintersleep that I love and have been listening to a lot lately.

• I am reading an advance copy of Emily Slapper’s new novel It Might Never Happen and it is so good! Emily and I will be appearing together at Waterstones Covent Garden on Wednesday the 2nd of July talking about Sad Girl stuff with Caitlin Curry from London Girls Book Club, tickets are still available.

• I am also overwhelmed and honoured that there is an ENTIRE podcast episode about why men should read Bitter Sweet which you can listen to now on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.