Without commitments and responsibilities to a predominant ​other—a partner, a ​child—​I’ve found myself wanting to identify what commitments and responsibilities I will choose to hold. To shape a life that has its own rituals, events to assign meaning to and rules to live by. Even if only that I will change my bedsheets once a week. Get eight hours of sleep a night. Make sure my nieces and nephews know I love them. Use up leftovers rather than spend money on take-aways. Hang out with my cats. Remember birthdays, sad anniversaries. Put out sunflower hearts for the birds. If I begin to fail in my personal and domestic routines, I sense that something is up, that more disorder could elbow in. These routines are the tenets of my ​self​­care, and gesture toward ​self-​love.

I’ve never felt sure how to love myself. If I can’t yet truly love myself, and the cost of that is being unworthy of other people’s love, what I’m left with is a kind of Fake it until you make it approach, a pursuit of compassion for the worst feelings I have about myself and an openness to accepting what others see as good in me. I am also unsure if I really know how it feels to be loved well romantically. Or at least, my memories of reciprocal romantic love have curdled with age. So I’ve always felt curious about the ways in which ​self-​care and its attendant promise of ​self-​love manifests for other women. Which one they buy into, or how they’ve been able to reject the lot of it.

Arrangements in Blue: Notes on Loving and Living Alone

By Amy Key. W.W. Norton & Company.

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Two broad categories suggest themselves to me. The first is the ​self​­-love that is ​affirmation-​based: I am enough I am a strong woman I am beautiful I can do it YOU GO GIRL. The sort of​self­-love that can propel a woman to dump a ​no​­good lover, to protect her boundaries, to apply for that job and ask for that raise! The second is the ​self-​­love that enables femininity to be performed, ostensibly for the benefit of the self but with the heavy inference that it will make you more ​lovable—​skin care routines, workouts, haircuts and colors, deep cleanses, diets and potions. The sort of ​self​­-love that promises to triumph over everything about your body that detracts from the radiant, unattainable, or at least unsustainable, image of the best you.

The former category of ​self-​­care, to me at least, feels accessible only when there is a challenge to overcome. I’ve certainly commanded myself to Come on, Amy, you can do this, motoring myself into cleaning the bathroom. Or I’ve instructed myself to sort out an irritating banality via an acidic little ​Post​­-it. I even have a magnetic memo board on my fridge, one you fix peg letters onto, as though displaying a menu or price list. One of the things on mine implores me to DO THE FUCKING THING. The “thing” in question being writing. But that does not feel possible as a permanent state of mind, or even as a daily practice, and the line between encouragement and critique is thick and gluey, a space of entrapment. The latter category of ​self­-love I play along with to a certain extent. I have all the creams and elixirs, and I try to adhere to their directions for use, but the pampering marketplace (the salons, the spas, the therapists) often make me feel ugly and acutely uncomfortable. If I’m honest, there has always been a bigger dopamine hit in tweezing a lone hair from my ​face—especially the ones that feel sharp, like the quill of a feather escaping from a ​pillow—​than there is in getting a professional manicure or a facial or in having my hair done.

My default mode of ​self-​love hasn’t fallen into either of these categories. Mine has been to spend money. Through spending, I hoped I’d find a way to like myself more. Be more confident. Be someone people wanted to spend time with. This false promise of love got me into debt, made me indulge every But why shouldn’t I voice in my head, buying things for myself, paying the bills when out with friends, never saying no when I couldn’t afford to do something, showboating, until debt became a way of getting through the month for necessities like traveling to work and the weekly food shop. Paying the minimum payment on huge credit balances and then spending back up to the limit. Ever since I was 18 and was first offered credit and an overdraft, I’ve amassed ​heart-​­thudding debts, the kind that make you dissociate, as though the debt is a fungus growing in the dark that you have no hand in. How did it get like this? I’d ask myself, clueless.

Debt became a means of maintaining a veneer of comfort and a pretty life, of keeping up with others. I’m not always excessive in how I’ve attempted this. I’ve bought myself supermarket flowers since my early 20s. Bunches of daffodils, tulips, ecstatically sculptural two-pound ​gladioluses—​like flower versions of ​icicles—​and all types and colors of cheap roses. I stockpile cheap pink ​grapefruit​­-scented bubble bath, never scrimping when I pour it under the running water. I buy good salted butter, olive oil, dark chocolate with salted almonds in it. I have ways of positioning these as essential to maintaining my ​well​­-being.

I lose days searching online for perfect somethings. A pair of gold hoop​ earrings—no specific design in mind, just the thrill of knowing them when I see ​them—​the sweet spot between my aesthetics and price point always a little out of kilter. “Art Nouveau ​Wall​­Hanging Cabinet Antique.” A discreet but effective toilet brush. Attractive coasters that won’t stick to the bottom of cups. And my current obsession: Swedish vintage brass candle sconces. This type of spending is pretty harmless, in that most often I’m not spending at all; I’m just indulging in the pleasure of almost spending, of the chase, perhaps in the same way people can derive pleasure from flicking through potential matches on dating apps, sorting them into yeses and noes but never taking it further. Almost spending is almost erotic.

I often plan my holidays and day trips to towns where charity shops dominate the high street. I enter the shop with a manic determination, circling a couple of times in the same way I used to circle nightclubs, in pursuit of a current or new crush. Just the possibility that my eyes might land on something I want raises my heart rate. On a recent charity shopping mission in​ Burnham-­on​­Sea, ​a seaside town with an amazing charity-shop-to-other-shops ​ratio, ​I had a good day. I bought a small onyx bedside lamp and a tiny cabbage-leaf-​shaped sauce dish. In the last shop I went into, I saw in a glass cabinet a silver brooch in the shape of a maple leaf. It wasn’t especially attractive to me in an aesthetic sense, but on the brooch, in blue enamel, were three ​initials—R C L. They were the initials of my friend Roddy, who had passed away. Charity shops can deliver gifts to you that you could never imagine for yourself. I couldn’t leave the shop without taking him with me.

But then there are the extravagant purchases I sometimes spend months or sometimes only seconds contemplating, negotiating a contract of justification with myself. That’s why I have a pair of Gucci shoes. That’s why I have a handmade, ​non​returnable ​Liberty-​­print smock dress that I guessed my size for, hidden in a box in my wardrobe as it is several sizes too big. I go through cycles of binge and purge. A big ASOS order, most sent back, the payment and refund a peculiar way of budgeting. A ruthless sale from my archive, garments pulled from ​under​­bed storage bags, cleaned, pressed, photographed, and put on eBay. My efficiency pleases me.

Another ruse I’ve fallen for in the pursuit of ​self-​­love is that everyone should have a signature perfume, which suggests, in its sensory expression, the essence of the wearer. I always wanted one of my own, to get to a point where I might miss, as Joni Mitchell sings, my “fancy French cologne.” About a decade ago I found ​it—​Portrait of a Lady. I asked for it for Christmas, my family clubbing together to buy it for me. It has become my perfume. The marketing blurb for it asks you to “consider the perfume a portrait of its wearer.” If my friends pass someone else on the street wearing it, they recognize it and I am brought to their mind.

The hit of buying something just for me, something exhilaratingly unnecessary, is so deeply engrained in my behavior I’ve rarely been able to control it, and I know that it isn’t a loving habit. As bell hooks observed, “We may not have enough love but we can always shop.” I have been addicted to the hovering promise of a fix since my late teens, when, at a branch of Topshop, I was offered a store credit card and could suddenly have more than I could pay for. Of transformation from dissatisfied to satisfied, from dull to glowing. The potential to go from single to coupled up has been too compelling. It still is. Perhaps it was just a matter of getting the spell ​right—​buying the right ​thing—​that would prompt the desired transition. A slot machine I might win big at.

I know that at its worst, my shopping has been very harmful. It has limited my ability to make the moves I’ve wanted to ​make—​if I’d not had over 30,000 pounds of debt when I took a redundancy payout from the civil service in my 30s, I would have felt rich with options; Instead, I felt the relief of being rescued from a fate I considered to be irreparably bleak. At its best, the way I’ve shopped is an expression of my naïveté. A belief the love I have for an object will somehow radiate love in reciprocation, or make others love me. I’m always at war with this impulse. My expensive perfume is never a source of regret, but plenty of other things are, or if not regret, they pose awkward questions. I love my Gucci ​shoes—​they are classic and practical. Black suede, a low block heel, twin G insignia. I congratulate myself for investing in something so wearable, so remote from a passing trend. But on an intellectual level I’ve duped myself. Sure, the shoes are attractive and solidly ​made, but they scream an allegiance to a particular type of ​lifestyle—wealthy and conservative. In wearing them, am I attempting to cosplay that world, a world I can find appalling, wasteful, and crass? If I bought the Gucci shoes to help me stand up tall in the world, confident and chic, I also bought them hoping others would see me that way too.

I know there’s a relationship between the way I’ve spent money to try to create an image of myself that might appeal to others, and the times I’ve desired to be loved by men who were indifferent toward me. To be cured of the want for approval from those who will never give it, those whom I have ambivalent feelings about. That seems to be the task I will always work at. To spot when I’m craving a status that I don’t believe in. Then there’s the Liberty smock dress. My intuition told me the dress would most probably not suit me, but I wanted to buy it anyway, to be a woman who could look dainty in a loose, ​old-­fashioned dress. All clavicles and flatness. Buying the dress was a rejection of my body, which would not fit the image of me in the dress that I had in my head. If the best things in life are free, the best of all is romantic love. How much do I need to spend to fill the gap love’s absence has made?

On my good days, I am able to strip back to simple things that make me feel cared for, the love that is to do with safety, warmth, stability. The “clean white linens” Joni longs for in “Carey,” and making my bed each morning. Sharing out a bunch of flowers between four ​vases—one for the kitchen windowsill, one for my bedside, a stem or two for the toilet, the biggest vase for the coffee table. Changing into my comfy clothes after work and then into fresh pajamas before bed. Standing in the sun in the garden for a minute or two with my eyes closed, sensing the sunlight within me. Turning off the TV or music to tune in to birdsong when I hear it. Getting an early night. Learning a new song. Chatting to my family. Saying no to an invitation or a demand that will bring stress. ​Self​­-care is as much about what you don’t do as it is what you do. These are loving actions. Habits that are a daily commitment to myself that can reliably bring about pleasure, or calm, or comfort without the need for another.

I feel as though I’m getting somewhere with those habits, getting somewhere with my overspending, recognizing how quickly it undoes all the care I’ve tried to put in place for myself. But to give life more shape than the succession of days lived well, I’ve also begun to think about what transitions have been important to me, and what transitions I might want to mark in the future.

A few years ago, I commissioned a ring from the jeweler Tessa Metcalfe. Poetry magazine had taken two of my poems, and I had shrieked with delight. They paid by the line, and it was more money than I’d ever made from my poetry. It was a different kind of spending, less about trying to create an image of myself that others would recognize as accomplished, secure, interesting, and more about giving myself a symbol to bring me back to myself. Tessa’s practice is to set jewels in gold castings of pigeon claws. In her creations, it’s as though the jewels have been scavenged, stolen by the claws, and in their grasp are presented to the world with a thrilling, near-vulgar defiance.

I’ve always had a thing for opals. When my grandma’s aunt died, my grandma gave me and my siblings 10 pounds each from her inheritance. We were to use this to buy an outfit to wear at my grandparents’ ruby wedding celebration. I was 8 at the time and had recently had my ears pierced. For my outfit I chose red chinos, a red-and-black ​polka​­-dot blouse, and a red, ​double-​breasted cardigan. I also chose some ​earrings—opal ​studs—​to replace the ones that I’d been pierced with. I’m not even sure if they were real or fake. But it seemed fitting that for the ring I had made, I choose opal again, its galactic flashes of fire and polar ice, its inherent vulnerability. And as the opal was faceted, it was even more vulnerable.

“What happens if it breaks?” I asked Tessa. “We’ll deal with that if and when it happens,” she said. “You just have to love it and wear it.” I wanted to look at life like Tessa, to find its precarity beautiful. But fear for the future of the opal on my finger nibbled away at my ​pleasure—​perhaps it was an act of ​self-​­sabotage to incorporate such fragility into my daily routine? It took some time to come to terms with the possibility that it might not last forever.

My decision to have an expensive and impractical ring made for myself had tones of Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City. In the episode I’m thinking of, “A Woman’s Right to Shoes,” Carrie sets up a gift registry at Manolo Blahnik in protest at her married and parenting friends not appreciating how she celebrated and paid out for their exciting changes in status. The similarity made me squirm a little, even though I cheered Carrie on.

When I bought the ring, I wasn’t saying I’m single, so I’m marrying myself! like a vapid banner of feminist empowerment, attainable only by buying into the traditions that had no place for me. Instead I was attempting to mark a change in my status: I was moving across the threshold from my 30s to my 40s, and I was about to publish my second collection of poems. I wanted a carnival of my own.

With this action, I tried to establish my own tradition of finding a way to mark my life’s occasions with ​something—​with an ​object—​that would help me remember and acknowledge transitions of my own: leaving my civil service job after 13 years (a holiday to Sri Lanka), publishing my first book of poems (a party), having one of my paintings chosen to illustrate a story in a magazine (bought a painting from a friend), paying off my consumer debt (solemnly wrote “Day One” on my wall calendar). If I didn’t note these milestones, they would often go unmarked. Not because the people around me are unkind or thoughtless, but because it’s not easy for them to see the importance of these transitions for me. These events have no equivalent in life’s presumed structure: We’re not preprogrammed to assign significance and attention to them in the way we are for births, marriages, anniversaries. I’m not saying I wish that the things that have been personally important for me were commodified in the same way as, say, a wedding might ​be—with bespoke stationery, color schemes, venue hire, and several celebratory meals that family and friends would be expected to drop everything for. But I do wish the culture I grew up in, and the white, hetero culture I’m funneled into, was not so unimaginative and hierarchical in its ability to recognize other life transitions that might be worth marking.

Without this openness from others, it takes a person who is willing to make a fuss of their own life to have their occasions noted. Or else that noting becomes a private act that no one else can acknowledge, because to celebrate oneself is shameful, greedy, undignified behavior. What are we missing of our friends’ and family members’ lives that are every bit as important as a change in legal status or the growth of a family? I fear it’s so many things. You might call my practice of noticing and marking things for myself ​self-​love. But I don’t want these objects that symbolize so much for me to be symbols only I can recognize. I want the thresholds that I cross over to be celebrated by others too. When this happens, it means so much. The symbolism of some vintage ​forget-me­-not blue glass buttons and a length of ​hydrange​a­ blue lace sent to me by my friend Camellia. The significance of a spring bouquet of white tulips and blue hyacinths that Becky timed to reach me when they would say something very specific.

One of my most precious possessions is a small, falling-apart notebook. Many of the historical documents of my family were destroyed by my paternal grandfather before his death from bowel cancer. This notebook has remained almost intact (save for some pages cut out of ​it—​who knows by whom). It is a diary, begun by his aunt, Mabel Evelyn Key, in 1926. There are poems and mottos she has copied out, ​self-​­portraits in silhouette, drawings of pigs with the rascally comment alongside of “Bacon of the future!” But it is mainly a document of hardship and sorrow, opening with the recording of “Mother died, Dec. 3^rd 1919. Bro Bob lost at sea Oct. 29^th 1916.” Mabel had the responsibility of “keeping house” from the age of 15, and lots of what she wrote about was doing without. Her life, and her ​wants—​just to be wished a happy birthday when “not a soul remembered,” to be thanked for her labor in the home, to be able to fill a stocking for her “only pal,” her brother John, who died by drowning just before ​Christmas—​throw my own excessiveness into sharp contrast. This diary is something I turn to when I am wallowing in my own lack, when I am losing perspective on what I need. Mabel’s needs were so paltry; she was so let down. I have boundless riches in comparison. Friends who want to spend my birthday with me. Appreciation from others when I help them.

One intriguing entry for me relates to something Mabel got. In red ink she wrote:

If things proceed as I expect, I am going to see about a bicycle in Sept., then ​heigh-​ho! for the open road. I never get past my own nose, & I am sick of Shields & its sooty streets, & train rides are out of the question,—​too expensive. Just wait till I get a bike, I’ll show them!

In the pages that follow, there are drawings of the bike alongside text that says “strong as a horse!” and “all my own work.” The pleasure of it is so vivid. Might I get past “my own nose” of internet shopping, with its interminable​ basket​ filling and abandonment of things that won’t fulfill me? Might I stop acquiring things as though ​self-​­love could be achieved through an incremental patching of the material holes I spot in my life?

But underneath the original entry, Mabel added in pencil, “You got your bike, but you also got a lot of things you didn’t bargain ​for—​serves you right!” I feel so sad that the bike became a totem of pain for Mabel, who just wanted to ride a bike and have some freedom. I wonder how the bike came to be to blame, if she’d wanted it too much and felt rightly punished for her wants. But maybe it was just her realization that the ​longed-for bike did not have the power to displace all that made her unhappy, and all the things I spend my money on cannot do that for me either.

I am still frightened that, should my desire for romantic love be fulfilled, another desire will rush in to occupy the space it once took up in my canyon of want. That strange grasping place that assumes what I want will be denied and fixates on improbable solutions. I have watched with distaste how coupled people transfer the need for the house to the need for a wedding, to the need for a child, to the need for a bigger house. The ​never-​ending escalation of desires. How might I resist always ​wanting—​scanning the future for the next unbearable absence that I must resolve, giving in to the emotional occupation of wanting instead of valuing what is? I’ve come to realize that​ self-​­love, for me, requires a rejection of desires that have a material form and a rejection of new statuses and life transitions as a fix for all that feels incomplete. If ​self​­-love is about reaching a state of appreciation for myself that grows from actions I take to care for my needs, rather than wants, I am trying to attune to what those needs are. What would quieten the growling feeling of desires that the world of things cannot touch? I wonder if I’d find that my greater need is ​self​-­friendship. Less intimidating than ​self-​­love; warmer. The ordinary joy of supermarket flowers around my room, rather than the unattainable perfection of a ​long​­stemmed, red rose.

Excerpted from Arrangements in Blue: Notes on Loving and Living Alone. Copyright © 2023 by Amy Key. Used with permission of the publisher, Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.