When the drama ends but your nervous system keeps talking.
Terms of Living is a collection of essays about the aftertaste of love: what lingers when a relationship is technically over, when the story has ended on paper but your body keeps rereading it.
These pieces move through detonation, the void, the marketplace that tries to profit from your ache, and then the slower work: recalibration, shadow, re-entry. Not the triumphant montage version. The version where you stop begging silence to become language, stop turning your life into a courtroom, and start living as one person, from a center.
This Book Is For
- People who can name their patterns and still get caught in them
- Anyone tired of slogans but still capable of tenderness
- Anyone learning the difference between intensity and intimacy
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The Five Movements
Detonation
The moment the story ends on paper. The relationship is over, but the nervous system hasn't caught up yet.
The Void
Learning to sit with absence. The space where someone used to be, and the discomfort of not filling it.
The Marketplace
When wellness culture tries to profit from your ache. The monetization of healing and the performance of recovery.
Becoming
The slower work of returning to yourself. Recalibration without a blueprint, shadow work without spiritual bypassing.
Terms of Living
Living as one person, from a center. Not the triumphant montage. The actual work of re-entry.
From the Introduction
TERMS OF LIVING is what happens when the drama ends but your nervous system keeps talking.
— Aleks Filmore
Book Details
The Heartbreak Canon
A three-book project about patterns, aftermath, and accountability
The Worst Boyfriends Ever
The catalog. Twenty-five relationships and the patterns they revealed.
Terms of Living
The aftermath. What happens when the drama ends but your nervous system doesn't.
Am I the Red Flag?
The accountability. Essays on recognizing your own patterns.