Terms of Living is a memoir-in-essays about aftermath. A relationship ends cleanly on paper, and the body keeps living inside the echo.

Set in a coastal town and written from close range, the book follows the days after the break: the stunned quiet, the dull hours, the compulsions that replace conversation, the private courtroom the mind builds when nobody hands you an ending you can hold. Alongside the personal narrative runs a layer of cultural and philosophical commentary on modern love, polite exits, and the industries that translate ache into content, products, and “growth.”

The governing idea is accuracy, not therapy. The self as a system with defaults, habits, and faulty readings that become visible under pressure. What changes over the five movements is not a mood. It’s authority: what gets to run the day, what stops running it, and what remains when the noise finally loses its job.