Love and charity share the same root word (caritas). How is that possible, when everything in our recent history suggest they cannot coexist, that they are antiethical, that if you put the two of them together in a sack they would bite and scratch and scream, until one of them is torn apart?

People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands - literally thousands - of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss.

Telling me I can do anything I want is like pulling the plug out of the bath and then telling the water it can go anywhere it wants. Try it, and see what happens.

I don't think you can call it stalking when it's just phone calls and letters and emails and knocking on the door.

I burst into tears and I cry and cry until it feels as though it is not salt and water being squeezed from my eyes, but blood.

I lost the plot for a while then. And I lost the subplot, the script, the soundtrack, the intermission, my popcorn, the credits, and the exit sign.

I never mind the accusations of domesticity, as long as people recognise that all of us, even the luckiest, will live lives in which we have our hearts broken, suffer the loss of loved ones, worry ourselves half to death about our kids.