The worst bit

Eighteen months ago my friend had an engagement party and when I woke up the next morning I felt two things:

1) I have never been this embarrassed

2) I need to be in therapy or I will kill myself

What did I do exactly that led to this all-consuming, stomach-churning, horrifying embarrassment I felt? I honestly don't know. The evening played out much as one would expect, drinking, talking, a few tears, laughter. It was all... expected.

The first faux-pas I encountered was apparently that you're expected to bring a present to an engagement party. (?). I brought a bottle of wine that I attempted to pass off as a present ('no dice' said my hostess's face) but although that struck a tiny chord of 'fuck if I know social conventions' within me, it certainly didn't ignite a burning fire of shame. If only because: real talk - both bride-to-be and groom earn way more than I do, they already fucking live together, THEY WILL BE MAKING A PRESENT LIST FOR THEIR WEDDING. What can I give them that they don't already have? Added to which, I'm supposed to buy not one, but two gifts, just cos a couple of bozo's (they're not really bozo's but bear with me on this rant) have decided to make their relationship 'official'. Except it's not official yet cos that happens when they sign the marriage certificate on their wedding day. Fuck! What the hell is the point of an engagement party? Why the fuck was I even there?

Maybe this line of questioning I experienced within the first ten minutes of arriving at the party didn't help my mood. Luckily my best friend had accompanied me and backed me up on the 'how many fucking presents do these muthafuckers want exactly?' question. She also agreed that she and I could and should get married in order to facilitate a present haul. That, at the time, (and somewhat now I will confess), seemed the only logical reason to enter the holy institution of marriage. In a similar vein to how Christmas is about celebrating how much bigger your present pile is than your brothers.

But there I was, stood in a bunglow, surrounded by people, the majority of which I knew only tangentially, feeling out of place and out of time and ill advised of the rules for this social gathering.

My next course of action was clear: locate the red wine and locate lots of it.

So boy did I. Get a glass, put your happy face on, start smiling and nodding and smoking and you might just make it through this evening, I told myself. Those things turned out to be true, but barely.

Around half way through the evening, once the lots of wine had started to work its magic, I found myself telling everyone everything about me. why my heart was broken, why I was so sad, how difficult I was finding life at the present time. On and on I went about my pathetic little life. 'Should I be in therapy?' I asked more than one person, more than once. The answer, of course, is if there's a strange girl (in every sense of the word) asking you if she should be in therapy at an engagement party is a resounding 'YES'. Like that, in capital letters. Receiving therapy is exactly where she should be. Not here, at this time of celebration, where the focus should be on a happy couple who have decided to strengthen their commitment to one another, instead of on this whining drunk girl that wants everyone to feel and be aware of her pain.

So that is maybe, possibly, why I woke up the next morning, with a pounding head that didn't quit for 72 hours, and throwing up that lasted for the morning, and this deep, unrelenting, unquitting, embarrassment that - I am not hyperbolising - made me want to kill myself. For whatever reason, though I think possibly laziness more than any other factor (killing yourself seems difficult and messy), I chose instead to find a therapist. Instead of spilling my guts to strangers, because keeping my guts to myself was starting to prove increasingly impossible, I would spill my guts to a paid professional that might be able to help untangle some of the torrents of shit that were swirling round my head at that time.

Admitting you can't cope is hard. This was the worst bit.

Ignore Call

The last time I was in Paris I was by myself. It had only been a few months previously and was back when I was still trying to fix a broken heart. I had stopped there for all of 24 hours on my way to Geneva because if you're going to stop anywhere on your way to Geneva it might as well be Paris. The most I'd achieved sight-seeing wise on that occasion was staring up at the Eiffel Tower at two in the morning on a bench and smoking my weight in roll-ups trying to figure out where things had gone wrong that I was sat, alone, in front of the Eiffel Tower at 2am on a Thursday (and simultaneously thinking that it was fucking cool to be sat smoking alone in front of the Eiffel Tower at 2am on a Thursday).

This excursion to the city of lights was very different.

For one thing my heart had been healed, or was scabbing over and starting to heal at the very least, for another I was actually paying for a bed in which to lay my head (instead of wondering aimlessly from bar to cafe to benches in order to kill time before making my way back on the metro to catch my Geneva flight) and for a third I was with my brother. The only person I could imagine spending every day with for three months and not end up hating him (I could be facetious and say this was because we already hated each other when the fact was we actually just get on exceptionally well for a brother and sister, but even though we can and do annoy the hell out of each other at times we have the option of shouting and screaming at one another and have it not destroy our relationship as he is my brother and I am his sister. It's expected. Which made things a lot easier than going away with a friend where you actually have to be polite and not sing advert jingles over and over again just to get a reaction out of the person - for example. Having to have the self control to not sing advert jingles over and over again, or do stupid voices, or make squeeing noises when seeing a dog for three whole months - basically just not be annoying/myself -is not within my skill set, thus the sibling trip was undertaken).

Our hostel was next to a canal and, as the evening was warm and light, we decided to sit by the water's edge and enjoy a dinner of fresh baguette, supermarche stinky cheese, and the cheapest red wine we could get our hands on. Over this impressively delicious dinner we talked and, as these things do, conversation turned to Hitler being a vegetarian. For whatever reason, my brother seemed to believe I was insinuating Hitler was better than him for choosing not to eat animals.

No I'm not, you haven't killed six million Jews last time I checked! ...Yet. Were my last words as he angrily stalked off. Taking the last of the wine with him as he went.

Now I was alone, wineless and brotherless, I choose the only option available to me and started my smoking tour of Europe with aplomb after procurring a packet of tobacco and some rolling papers which could always be relied upon to keep me amused. I sat back down in a different spot by the canal (if you ever find yourself shouting about Hitler in public I've found it's normally best to move on pretty quick) and set to the arduous, yet perplexingly satisfying, work of rolling cigarettes and then smoking them. The general law of averages means that no single female can rest in one spot for very long without being approached by a continental man tying to make his luck. This is not the case in England where I'm either too fat or too scary or too weird for the opposite sex to approach me. None of these factors seem to be an issue for men of Middle Eastern or African extraction that live in European cities so it was not long before a charming guy going by the name of Mohammad approached me and asked for a light. We conversed as well as we could with my pigeon French and his slightly better conversational English. He laughed when I said "d'accord" which is the one French word I know that seems to consistently delight French speakers whenever I use it. I try and use it sparingly but the reaction it gets makes me hungry for further approval so once it's out of the bag I end up peppering it through the entire conversation and it loses it's impact pretty fast.

Am sure there's a lesson to be learned in there somewhere.

Mohammad asked for my phone number and, for whatever odd reason, I gave it to him. There are too many situations I find myself in when I do a thing and do not not know why I have chosen to do this thing. This was one of those situations. Why give my phone number to a man who has approached me purely based on the fact I'm a single woman and who has asked for my phone number after an odd and awkward conversation that took place using broken English and even brokener French? It's not as if a deep spiritual bond had been uncovered. It's the fact that I'm a single woman, and further that I'm a single woman who has deigned to converse with him that has encouraged this enquiry of Mohammad's. I'm not entirely convinced he wants my phone number so we can continue having odd and awkward conversations where either one of us can only hope to be understood, at best, 65 per cent of the time. I suspect Mohammad might be after something a bit different to that.

But give him my phone number I did. My actual phone number. The phone number that meant he could call me on the phone (where one assumes our understanding rate would drop significantly into the low 20's percentile given that most of our meaning was conveyed through hand gestures and facial expressions).

I guess I was trying a new 'why not' mentality. I say 'new'. 'Why not...' had ruled most of my existence up till that point:

"why not go to the most romantic city on earth alone when you've been romantically rejected?"

"why not take these drugs a stranger has offered you that he says is speed but could literally be anything?"

"why not fall in love with emotionally unavailable men who continually let you down and are only interested in you when you're not interested in them?"

The answer to all these questions is of course, "because it's fucking stupid". But I wasn't interested in the answers so much as I was the the two little enticing words of "why not?" They had cajoled me into a lot of dumb shit (along with their good friends "what's the worst that can happen?") but this phase of the "why nots" seemed different somehow. I was older, smarter, more worldly. I had a handle on this now.

Except; no, no, and hell no because I gave Mohammad my number. None of these older, smarter, wiser traits are attached to giving a strange French boy your phone number just because he asks.

There was an upside to the number giving dumbassery which was that Mohammad now felt free to wander away with his two other friends (who seemed perplexed by the little tête-à-tête rendezvous he'd just indulged in - if there's one thing I understand it's the international sign language for "dude, the fuck are you doing?"). This relieved me of feeling awkward and odd in conversation with another human being (my default setting whatever language it takes place in) and free to sit alone once more, (though slightly fearful of being approached by another strange man) and to ask myself the same question Mohammad's friends had asked him; "dude, the fuck are you doing?"

Right on cue my brother came up and said that was silly then.

Maybe a bit, I replied.

Shall we not argue over Hitler being a vegetarian again? he asked hopefully.

As long as you never leave me alone by a canal again I said. Boys whose language I do not speak try and pick me me up and it's unbearably uncomfortable. (I was unable to divulge my own part in encouraging such things as I was horrifically embarrassed by it all).

He laughed and we walked back to the hostel to spend another night with overbearing Americans rolling into our dorm at 4am pissed out of their heads.

Just then, I looked at my phone as it alerted me to the fact that an unknown foreign number was attempting to make contact with me.

"WHY NOT" screamed my internal monologue as a deeper, more sensible, part of me pressed 'ignore call'.

Maybe I did have a handle on this now. Though how long that would last was anyone's guess.

Olive

It was the finality of thing that confused me.

'She died this morning.'

And that in itself was (sort of) fine and not wholly unexpected but my initial thought was "I'm never going to be able to speak to her ever again". And it was the 'never' and the 'ever' parts of that thought that struck me as odd. Because although we say "never ever" and we oftentimes mean "never ever" but this was really, truly, never ever.

The choice was no longer my own.

That's what bothered me more than anything. The fact of her dying was sad, yes, of course it was sad. But it's not like we were bestest buddies. She was a ninety-four year old woman and I was not. Our common interests were knitting (though she was unable to do much of that towards the end), cooking (though she hadn't done much of that in years given her withering appetite and widowed status), and being related to one another. But none of these really led to any deep or meaningful conversations. I never felt profoundly connected to her in any way. I wasn't really at all interested in indulging in a deep and meaningful conversation with her in the first place. But now, if I did want to do that, if I did want to discuss theology or philosophy, or slipping stitches purl-wise or knit-wise when the pattern doesn't specify, then I couldn't. I didn't actually feel an overwhelming desire to go talk to her about any of these subjects, or anything else at all, but now I knew that I couldn't and it just seemed strange to me. This finality.

If anything it left me feeeling a little winded. My stomach dropped and my legs felt eerily light. "I'm never going to be able to speak to her ever again" when, just before the knowledge of her death was imparted on to me, I'd walked around believing I could go and speak to her whenever I wanted. This woman, who had always been around as far as I was concerned, and always available for a chat had I wanted to take the opportunity was no longer there. What was once true, now was not. And it had happened just like that.

I'm never sure what I'm supposed to do with knowledge like this, where and how I'm supposed to squirrel it away and process it. I sometimes get scared because I don't understand how emotions work exactly because, really, what am I supposed to be feeling right now? I couldn't tell you what I was feeling two minutes ago as I was still in the 'post-work' daze with a single minded/automatic determination to get through my front door, take off my shoes, take off my coat, and collapse on the sofa. Was I thinking about anything else? Oh, yeah, I was thinking about my nephew waking up and saying; "is it night time still?" when he stayed overrecently and slept for about eleven hours (a new world record for a toddler surely). I was repeating "is it night time still?" in his cute little two-year-old voice in my head and giggling: "is it night time still?"

"no, it's the day time now, the sun is up and he's got his hat on"

"his hat on?"

"yeah, look. I'll open the curtains and you can see"

"what hat on?"

Which is the sort of two-year-old perfect logic that makes you wish you hadn't said the usually-accepted-by-adults phrase that actually makes no sense when you think about it. So that's what I was thinking about and that's the last words I said (using the two year old intonation) before she told me:

"is it night time still?" I said

"Um... She died this morning" she replied

I think about that. The non sequiturs we both employed. She obviously had this thing, this huge thing, that she knew she needed to tell me face to face (hence no phone calls during the working day) and was building up to telling me all day and probably rehearsed in her head before I came in ("She'll come in and go 'hi", and then I'll just have to come straight out with it right away so at least she knows and it's done") but I come in and speaking in a silly two year old voice say "is it night time still" and ruin the practice she's done because there's no way she guessed I would come out with something like that. No way she could guess I was in a playful mood and had been giggling for the last bit of my journey home thinking about how cute my nephew is. So that's how it happened, that's how I found out.

But I still don't know how I feel about that.

Is it night time still?

Ugh.

I need to talk about this dream I had last night centering around this guy ('boy A') who completely ripped my fucking heart out (not the alcoholic 'nearly died cos of his drinking' one. A different one.) (There's a few). To understand my need of discussing this dream, first you need to understand the protagonist and what constituted our 'relationship'.

I was gonna say 'we dated' then but we never actually did (as embarrassing as that is to admit). We met, we emailed a few times, but 'dating' never really came into it. What did happen was having met and enjoyed a rather jolly email correspondance for a month or two I decided he was potentionally 'the one' ('the one' what god only knows) so having got off my tits on MDMA at 3 o' clock in the morning I did what any girl with a credit card and a false drug-induced sense of confidence would do and booked myself and a friend a mini-break to his town for the Wednesday after (with the sole intention of seducing him. HA! Seducing never happens on a Wednesday! Scientific FACT). As I drunk milk out of the bottle and we attempted to correctly navigate our way through the internet booking system my friend assured me 'It'll be fun!' (pro-tip: people on drugs always think everything will be fun). Five days post hence and sober, with enormous trepidation, I texted him on the day of arrival and invited him out that evening. Then (cos I is classy like that) made him go to a chain 80's club with me and my friend. To the sound of the theme song from Baywatch (was that even around in the eighties? FALSE ADVERTISING) we sat with our thighs touching on the slouchy sofas with mysterious stains and duct-taped holes places like this tend to have (the sofas not the thighs). Just as I was desperately trying to repress the urge to mouth along to the 'I'll be there' bit he very suddenly starting nuzzling my neck, then my nose with his nose, and slowly went in for a rather delightful drunken kiss while my (very attached) friend amused herself with two randoms who were going to end up disappointed when she didn't deliver on the unspoken threesome deal that appeared to be brewing between them all (the morning after she berated me for leaving her with strangers while I got off with boy A. I was like 'but we booked this trip when high on drugs with the express purpose of me getting off with boy A! All I did was hold up my end of the bargain!' Which, I still maintain is a pretty watertight defence. If you want my undivided attention don't agree to a zany roadtrip where we go see the boy I've decided is going to save me from myself. Another pro-tip). I was delighted and shocked at this kissing development thing, despite the fact that that's why I'd spent £80 on a mini-break in the first place. 'This. This here. This is it' I (*spoiler alert* mistakenly) thought.

As we said our protacted sloppy-snog goodbyes he said 'keep in touch yeah? And let me know about the festival thing...', 'yeah. Sure. See you...' I breathed eloquently as I reluctantly let go of his hand and he walked off home. Here was my first mistake: I had assumed that the kissing (his initiation), the vague invitation to see him again, this all meant that it was all a done deal. We now just had to go through the motions of eventually ending up deeply in love and happily ever after. The bit between now and this undefined ending was all a formality I figured. So when I got back home and immediately booked myself a ticket and a hotel room for the (one-day) 'festival' (feat. Snow Patrol and The Pippettes I do believe) it just seemed like I was, once again, holding up my end of the deal. It didn't seem utterly ridiculous and somewhat stalkerish at all (why didn't someone mention it was utterly ridiculous and somewhat stalkerish to do this on the back of a drunken snog - that had already cost me £80 remember - and some funny emails? WHY??) (not that anyone could have stopped me at that point. I was on a boyfriend hunt and by 'eck I wasn't coming home without one trussed up and ready to stuff) (so to speak). However, things didn't really turn out like that. That weekend, full of vim and vigour (and liquor. Mostly liquor) I tried to kiss him again. 'I don't think that's a good idea' he said. I begged and pleaded but apparently that's not as much of a turn on as it sounds. He escorted me to a taxi and I went back to my hotel, alone.

Cut to: Years later. YEARS (maybe two). Stood outside a pub he declares that we 'belong to one another'. Now here, here is where I believe maybe a bit of what I thought previously of what might happen between us is implied. I had thought, upon receipt of this declaration, that maybe, possibly, perhaps, the years before when I'd spent upwards of £150 on hotels and festival tickets (classic, classic pulling technique) this ending I'd half-heartedly imagined ('half-heartedly' because I'd never really got past the bit where he states how in love with me he secretly is. The logistics and practical considerations - silly little things such as 'do you even want to go out with him anymore?' - weren't part of the fantasy funnily enough) would now all materialise. All the formality stuff was really, genuinely now just a formality. If I'd been a dumbass to expect these things before I really don't think I was a dumbass to expect them now. I think, in this particular case, it was a bit of a given. Happily ever after was inked in. No tip-exing allowed I had thought. The morning after this declaration (and some pretty serious snuggling), he made sure he had my number; 'keep in touch yeah?' he said.

I didn't hear a peep out of him for the next six months.

So. The dream. It was nice and it was horrible. Nice in the way a sex dream is always nice, horrible in the way that he is the last person I would ever wish to have a sex dream about (I never even got to have sex with him in real life!) Plus the dream-sex wasn't even that good. I remember thinking, as he was pumping away at me, 'oh, he's never had a girlfriend before. That's why he's a bit rubbish, I'll have to teach him' (reader sidenote: here's where we know it's dream-logic as I should not be in charge of educating anyone about anything, least of all sex). In the dream I noted down on a scrap bit of paper all the times we fucked over the course of a weekend for my files and then I awoke, feeling dirty and sickened.

A scrap bit of paper?

My dreamiverse sex files deserve better than that.

The House

I walk towards a house, a house with a lot of memories and a lot of pain attached to those memories. Behind me in a leopard print suitcase that has already raised a few humorous comments from the friend that accompanies me on this walk, along the lines of 'I hope we don't get punched for being chavs thanks to your suitcase' and more of a similar ilk. I laugh but I'm secretly thinking 'you are wrong. Leopard print is the best' (because she is and it is. Burberry is chav maybe, leopard print is barmaids and b-movies). As we walk closer to the house the discussion becomes about where I was in my life the last time I walked this route and the events that have occured in my life subsequently.
'He broke my heart but then I got a clue'
'Yeah'
'Well, no, then I got an alcoholic who was married and THEN I got a clue'
'Well... yeah'
'But the point is I eventually got that clue'
'That's the important thing'
'After being destroyed completely I found that clue hidden under months of therapy. Tricksy clues'

And we laugh and it's all very jovial and haha, isn't my love life tragic, type stuff but under the laughter and the jokes is this very real 'ow, this all still hurts' feeling and this other 'oh my god I can finally at least pretend to joke about this stuff' that jostles for prominance. The current occupier of the house is one of the causes for the stabby heart feelings I'm experiencing but I'm not sure how I'm going to respond to the site of all the heartache I've dealt with there. Like some kind of muscle memory maybe I'll feel the feelings for the heartbreaker, or maybe those experiences still haunt the house like ghosts and it will just take me being in that time and space to awaken them into existing again at which point they will destroy me once and for all. Who knows? The other feeling I have is relief, relief he won't actually be there, relief I'm pleased he won't be there (which is more important in more complex ways), relief that the person who got her heart broken those many many moons ago no longer exists in this dimension. Where she went to, I'm not sure but she isn't me anymore. Where did she go to now I think of it? Does she still exist? Is she biding her time before making an impromptue return? Has she been assimilated into this current being? What happens to the past versions of ourselves, do they remain in the past? Are they accesible in the present? Do they inform the future?

We turn a corner and there is the house. Onwards and upwards is the only way to find out.

What you asked for.

This is where it starts and where it ends. This one moment. My hands cupping a mug of lukewarm green tea. Take a look around. Examine my face. This isn’t a moment I expected to signal any great changes. It was just another normal Sunday up until now.

The green tea denotes my attempt at another lifestyle change for the better, one that is ultimately doomed to failure (but I don’t know that at the time, infused as I am with a sense of purpose that I kid myself will last forever but ends up being three weeks – a personal best as it happens), sat in a big old green armchair that I got for free and cover with blankets to stop it grossing out any callers to my humble abode. Sat opposite is my friend, who is on a sofa that I also got for free and also covered in blankets but just because I hate the real colour of it and can’t afford/be bothered to have it reupholstered. My friend who, at this moment, cannot meet my eye, my friend who often treats me with a mixture of weary indifference and utter awe and loves me but doesn’t always know how to show it or even if she actually feels it because she’s just as fucked up as me, albeit in wildly varying ways.

It’s not a place in time and space that I expected to signal the dawn of something new and the crushing pain of something ending. But nonetheless, this, right here, is where it starts and where it ends.

A few days before I’d been sat in a pub. One of those proper pubs you know? Like, the sort of pub with an old man in the corner who never moves and judges the other patrons silently but steadily whilst continuously supping from his pint (which never seems to get empty and yet you never see him getting a refill), and there’s a dog that doesn’t belong to anyone that roams around just sniffing everything but is not too bothered about saying hello, and it’s got faded flowery wallpaper and still the carpets and seats feel a bit grimy with ash even though it’s been against the law to smoke in there for over a year now? A place like that yeah? That’s my favourite sort of pub. A pub with history and regulars and a dart’s league. Anyway, that’s where we all sat, me and my friends and some of their friends and a load of other people in groups who we didn’t know. All sat around a big screen watching a bunch of blokes running around kicking a ball and cheering and screaming when the ball happened to find itself at one end of the field and sighing and cursing when it found itself at the other. Everyone in that room wishing and praying for the same result ‘let us WIN’. But I was the only one who really wanted it. Who really needed it in fact. Ardent football fans may disagree with me on this point (and they’d have every right to) but I was the only one who knew the truth, who knew what was riding on this game, this was the game that would decide what happened with my heart now. I asked the universe to prove something to me. Something that I couldn’t put into words but I sent out truth probes from the bottom of my soul to the heavens above and asked for this one little thing; ‘let us win. If we win I’m finally free’.

So we all sat, these strangers and these friends and we all concentrated but I knew I was the only person in the room, in the country, that was concentrating that hard on making us win. Every bit of me focused. Every atom tingling with desire. Willing and begging the universe for just this one, small, tiny, favour: Make it so that I know I’m going to be ok. Just this one sign. That’s all.

I’ve done this kind of thing before but this was the first time I was asking for something massive from the universe and not something silly like getting text messages from inconsequential boys (although this was the first time I had learned of the powers of asking for things from the universe – it worked every time without fail – but I tried to only use it when I really had to as I knew it was the wrong application of these divine powers and knew the universe had to readdress its balance in some way every time I requested something from it). It seems strange that it had never occurred to me before to be asked to be set free. I guess, at that point, I didn’t know that freedom was all I really needed. I still liked the shackles he had on me in because it felt safe there - even if it didn’t make me happy; this was for everyone who has loved someone that doesn’t love quite as much or in quite the same way in return and let that destroy them a bit.

Back to the armchair and the green tea - I should have known then, in fact I kind of did know then but I didn’t know I knew if you get my meaning. Like, when you turn around suddenly and catch somebody staring at you but you consciously weren’t aware of it to begin with and couldn’t say in the spilt second between you looking round and catching the eye of a stranger exactly why you were looking around to begin with. I just knew what she was going to say before she said it. I’d been waiting to hear those words for the last two years. But she doesn’t come out and say it right away. We dance around it and flirt with it a bit. Normally my patience gets the better of me but this time, this time I’m happy to wait. I don’t want to take the red pill just yet.

Two weeks earlier from this moment, the bar where he and I first met had burnt down, which had some kind of beautiful poetic justice. I mean, it’s sad, I’m sorry to the people who owned it but come on; how often does the universe provide such tangible metaphors? It felt both jarring and yet extremely cathartic seeing that on the news and seemed another universe sign that things were ending or about to end. However, I was still floored when she stopped faffing around telling me boring stories about people at her work that I have no real vested interest in hearing about and said:

‘He… He has a girlfriend’.

Stop.
Tape.

Freeze Frame.

Stop.
Everything.

Right there, is where it ended.

'Oh'. Breathe. Just breathe. Act normal. ‘How long?’

‘Two weeks I think, Gary mentioned about it in the car last night but even he’s not sure’

I want to know how I can remove myself from this room, this situation, without anyone noticing. I will run away to France. Or Moscow, I’ve always wanted to go to Moscow. I just need to work out how to make my atoms travel there one-by-one with the power of my mind because I don’t think I can physically move any part of my body ever again. I want the atoms to sink into the chair I’m sat on, to melt away leaving no trace. Just, please God, don’t let anyone look at me. Don’t let them see my face etched with pain and betrayal. I don’t want anyone to know what I’m feeling right now.

‘Are you ok?’

‘Fine’

‘He’s a loser anyway. You wouldn’t want to be with him, you can do sooo much better!’ She rolls her eyes and bends forwards whilst saying the ‘so’ to emphasise the point. I laugh, thinly, and this seems as good a time as any for her to change the subject. She can’t cope with negative emotions and I am glad of it because I don’t want or need to discuss how my soul has been crushed any further. As soon as she finishes her tea, she leaves. I couldn’t tell you what else we discussed that day.

Time moves along, as it is wont to do, and so do I. I eventually begin moving limbs again. I even find myself chewing food occasionally – if only out of habit than any real hunger – I stand and walk. I go to work. I lie down on my bed and close my eyes for dreamless sleeps. Every minute of this is punctuated by the thought that ‘he isn’t mine anymore’. Sometimes this will have an angry exclamation point on the end of it. Other times it will be said sadly and quietly, ending with an ellipsis. Sporadically, normally in the morning as I remember to do things like brush my teeth or hair (I do not always remember to do these things. Or I do remember but choose not to due to the monumental effort it involves), it will be said with a question mark: ‘He isn’t mine anymore?’ Like I have to double-check it wasn’t just a horrible nightmare that was a little too real at the time and is now mixed up with other memories that actually happened.

I had only myself to blame. This was exactly what I asked for. We had won that stupid football game and so, it seemed, had I. The universe had set me free, it never occurred to me that freedom would mean falling into nothingness, but that was indeed exactly what I had asked for. Wishes can come true.

What we are Now - Part 1

The other night I dreamt of Anne Heche (of course. Of course you did. Who doesn’t dream of Anne Heche from time to time except for everyone but you?). We were on a boat, escaping to Mexico from the zombies who had taken a hold of America; it was made clear to me that it was my job to keep Anne happy – to keep her calm and stop her from losing her mind. I do not know why everyone was so concerned with Anne’s mental health when there were surely more pressing issues at hand (zombies! Boats! Mexico!) but they were. It was the job of up most importance to make sure Anne was alright and it was a job that was my responsibility. Everyone made that clear – I was the only one with the power to do this job well. Despite a couple of dodgy moments I fulfilled this task with aplomb just by listening and laughing and understanding. I woke up and had this very real, visceral reaction that went thusly: ‘what the fuck was that?’

Later: we sit in a mid-priced Italian chain restaurant. Somewhere that has wicker chairs and candles in wine bottles. It is the kind of establishment that just aches for upper middle-class snobbery to slobber all over it, all the while the peons enjoy their reasonably priced and delicious mushroom pizzas (or ‘pizza di mushroomi de la formaggio’ or some such faux Italian sounding schtick that makes the aforementioned upper middle classes snort with derision and the lower middle classes feel like they are eating something more special than, what is essentially, just a delicious mushroom pizza. I tend to deal with this dichotomy by employing all the middle-middle classness I have at my disposal: playing up the name when ordering with a fake/cute cute/fake Italian accent and putting a little pizzazz into the proceedings. Servers either find this charming and funny or think I’m a dick. It’s never easy to tell which way the wind will blow on that score. It’s usually the former – I have a habit; when I am in the right mood, of being able to charm just about anyone. It’s effortless when I can be bothered. Indeed, even in the rare cases I’ve convinced myself it’s the latter they’ll return to the table and place my latte down with a flourish of the hand and a notable accent on the ‘tey’ bit of the latte (dry humourists are always difficult to read but particularly when they are writing down drinks orders.) There is a table to our left full of the oddest selection of characters ever assembled to break bread together. Balloons and comedy sized badges indicate a 21^st birthday is being celebrated. On my 21^st birthday I was corralled into going to a rock/goth club (the antithesis of everything I stand for: black tulle mini skirts and black lipstick. I tried for a while to be big booted and heavily eye linered, a step or two away from the world of goth, but it never stuck. I enjoy sunlight and unicorns and daisies too much. Now I embrace the idea of actually looking nice rather than a fucking mess. For the most part anyway) with a bunch of people I didn’t know who were aquatinted with my mentor/best friend at the time. At the stroke of midnight which welcomed my anniversaire into existence I had one puff on a ‘proper’ cigarette (as opposed to the rollies I was taught to smoke) and spent the next hour being sick into the club toilets. Anyone who has ever been to a club, let alone a goth club, will tell you one thing and one thing alone: the last place on earth you want to spend upwards of 47 minutes is in the toilets of those types of establishments. The birthday boy (it may be girl) turns round as we shuffle into the wicker seats round our designated table and tries to engage us in conversation. We make a telepathic decision to engage as little as possible back. That is what we are now.

I sense the birthday boy/girl girl/boy is playing up to her/his ‘wacky’ persona. I too once thought my affected eccentricities were the only things that made me interesting: the smoking, the drinking, the drugs, the sex. All these things added shading and colour to what was otherwise dull and asinine. It was only later that I found out everyone adds these skills to their CV in order to make them more marketable for general consumption. All the things I tried to hide; my shyness, my lack of knowledge on carnal matters, my bizarre love of tidying and lists – these are the things I learned to like about myself and, because of this, these are things that matter. I tried on the hat entitled ‘crazy fuck up’ but it was never part of me, not a marker on my DNA, just an identity that a thousand others have tried at some point – to wildly differing degrees of success. Losing these attributes wasn’t so much me giving them up, I just shed a skin I never felt entirely comfortable with anyway. Had anyone told me this at 21 I would have told them to fuck right off. As I sit in the restaurant nodding sagely at the knowledge of what this youth will have to endure in their journey of self-actualisation to come – a patronizing sense of having seen it all before encompasses me and I experience a brief sensation of feeling ‘grown up’. This is how we know I will, sooner or later, get taught a lesson of my own.

The morning after the engagement party I wake up and finally, after 27 years, really truthfully understand the meaning of the word ‘hangover’. A throbbing pain in my frontal lobe threatens to bash my brains out from my skull and a queasiness makes its way from the bottom of my stomach up to my gullet. I manage to hang my head over the toilet just in the nick of time and watch as yellow liquid is expelled with great, passionate force into the bowl. None of this compares to the embarrassment radiating through every atom in my being. I wipe my hand across my mouth and slowly stand up, careful not to move my head around too much for fear of offending the great dragon of unending pain that has taken up residence within my skull cap (it subsides after 2 hours but takes 48 hours to pack its things and leave for good). I am finding breathing difficult now, not because of the alcohol poisoning which, after near on 10 months of celibate, straight edge living, is something I never thought I’d experience again but because I am having flashbacks of conversations from the night before. Holding James in my arms and telling him he’s not his dad and is good enough for my friend. A hug that bordered inappropriate but never crossed that border. I think it probably only looked that way to an outsider anyway, him and I knew there wasn’t anything sexual about this conversation but maybe that’s what everyone else freaked out about it. Anyway, today I am sure of one thing: I hate myself.