Love is Tearing Me Apart... Again

At a party a couple of weeks ago, I was talking to someone about my novel, which goes on-sale today, when he interrupted me.

“Awww,” he said, “You’re in love with your book!”

I was trying to think of a self-deprecating, humble response but the fact was, he was right. I am head-over-fucking-heels.

And in keeping with the book’s title, that’s not necessarily a good thing.

Here’s Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh on love:

“Love can be a kind of sickness… What makes us sick is attachment. Although it is a sweet internal formation, this kind of love with attachment is like a drug. It makes us feel wonderful, but once we are addicted, we cannot have peace.”

The strange thing about publishing a book about the kind of heartbreak I felt so frequently in my teens and early twenties now that I’m older and married to a terrific guy is that it’s been a while since I’ve indulged in that kind of selfish, grasping love my characters are experiencing right now, the kind of love that I’ve doomed them to experience over and over again, every time someone opens the book...

Not too long ago, another friend helped me see how sick with love I was over the book. I mean, all the signs were there: I was thinking about it all the time, I was anxious about whether it would work, I was terrified about what would happen to me if it failed.

So we listened to the song that is also the book’s title. And for the first time in weeks I didn’t think about the book’s Amazon ranking, marketing budget, or critical reception. I just thought about all the people who’d helped me write it: my editors, agent, husband, friends, teachers, family, and Ian Curtis and Joy Division who created the saddest, most beautiful song in the world.

I’m anxious and nervous all over again, and I feel as if I can’t do enough for this book. Except, the thing is, the book doesn’t care. The book doesn’t want to be a success. The book doesn’t want anything.

The book isn’t alive. The book isn’t me. The book is just something I did with the help of a lot of other people.

Now if only I could remember that.