Letting go is more acute, holding on is dull and constant. Being stuck between the two is the most painful.

I live in one of those greenie council areas and one year they left tiny wheelie recycling bins (made from type 2 recyclable plastic) outside everyone’s houses. Mine lives on my desk, and I’m naughty because I don’t just chuck scrunched receipts in it, but also bits of thread and small fabric scraps from my sewing machine, and once even an empty panamax tab.

It’s a bit like fried rice, actually. People don’t always know that fried rice is for the leftovers. The best fried rice is made with rice that has fermented for a couple of days in the fridge. Then add the rest of the scraps: cut up some old beans; whatever cold meats (tofu) are left over; half a thawing box of what might be chicken (tofu) curry; the last of the old eggs.

It’s funny how no one mentions the leftovers from a relationship. Like each person will find an end point and then it’s like you never had anything together. But there are always leftovers. I guess it’s because we don’t see them all the time? I mean, our selves are just funny onion things and the layers are all our experiences, but even then those layers have thinner layers when you look close. And you don’t want to, really, because onions are unpleasant.

I’m hiding a sprouted onion in my closet at the moment. And actually it’s weird because I don’t know where onions come from. I mean, from the ground obviously. But my onion has been shrinking or shrivelling or something, and the shoots have been growing, so maybe when I stick it in the ground one day the original onion will disappear and there will only be the shoots left and then one day a new onion will just appear. The Little Prince style, naturally.

Sometimes I feel like we might all just be small recycling bins full of bits of thread that are the leftovers from a spool that made things that other people care about.