Single; what?

Sometimes, life throws you situations that are so awful, that ”coping” isn’t enough. You need to shut down and shut off. 

In this ice cold existence, there is comfort and peace. No one can get close enough to make you feel anything bad. But, they also can’t get anywhere near you to make you feel anything good. 

It’s not that you don’t want to feel anything good anymore; you absolutely do. But it’s all about association. For me, anyway. The last time I felt something good, it ended in my own emotional hell. Therefore I associate feeling good with being closely followed by something terrible. 

When you've shut everything off, you can’t feel anything. And if you’ve been through something painful enough, the “nothing” is preferable. Almost like a holiday away from feelings. Like being wrapped in cotton wool. It’s all happy days until you encounter something that makes you want to feel the good stuff again. 

Ordinarily, it’s nice to just wander around with your cotton wool barrier, being able to take in the world from a new angle. A totally unbiased angle. An angle that is all for you, with no one else to dictate your decision or sway your opinion. Kind of like seeing everything in HD. 

But just sometimes, you encounter a person or an experience that tempts you into opening up for the good stuff. 

It’s a cycle of what has become your everyday emotionless bliss, followed by hopeful optimism, peppered with crippling fear. 

Isn’t the human mind a country of wonderment and confusion?

Honestly? You cross my thoughts so rarely now that to write about you is a tiresome task. 

You made a lot of promises and never kept them. 

You said you loved me when you didn’t anymore. 

You told me I’d be more attractive if I didn’t smoke and lost some weight, after saying I was the most beautiful girl in the world and staring into my eyes. 

You wouldn’t let me end it after you’d said these cruel things. You didn’t want it to end so it didn’t. It only ended when you were ready. You never let me end it when I was ready.

You made me feel insignificant. 

You made me feel like a waste of space.

You made me feel stupid. 

You made me feel insecure. 

You made me feel unsafe.

You made me feel unloved.

You ignored me for days on end without explanation or reason.

You got bored but didn’t have the courage to tell me.

You let me continue wondering what was going on, when I knew you didn’t love me or want me anymore. 

You let me book my flights to see you, when you’d already realised you didn’t want this anymore.

You initiated the break up conversation with “I don’t have any fucks left to give for this relationship.”

We act like strangers now. 

I remember the morning I collected D from the airport as if it was yesterday.

Every emotion I was capable of was coursing through me. I was terrified in case what we thought was there turned out of to be a silly holiday romance. I was delighted at the prospect of seeing him again. I was already sad to say goodbye to him, before he’d even arrived. 

I got to the terminal probably about half an hour before his flight was even due in. I couldn’t stand pacing around my house any more, so I’d set off early. 

I don’t remember much about being stood behind the barriers, waiting for him to appear. I just remember that every person I saw was him. I saw his eyes everywhere I looked. 

And then suddenly he was there. The real him. And we saw each other, in the flesh, in real life. And it was as if the airport froze and there was only us. I remember we walked towards each other, and slid into one another’s arms. All of the conversations over the past 6 weeks. All of the phone calls. All of the photos. All of the words, the promises. Everything. All in this one moment seemed to bleed into one, and it felt like I’d never not been holding him. I’d never not known him. We’d never not been in love. 

Side note: When I started writing the blog, I found it so helpful. It helped me order my own thoughts. It helped me explore my own theories and opinions. I’ve always enjoyed writing the blog, and looked forwards to writing about someone new every time I went on a new date. 

Writing about D, and putting order to these thoughts, and breathing life into it all, has been emotionally one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I have to write about it, I know that. But I can’t wait for the story to be over. When I come to write at the moment, it looms over me. Having to go back there. And revisit how I felt. How he made me feel. Feeling safe because he’d told me it was. I look back on it all now, in hindsight; the finest seat in the house, and it’s like a horrible film that keeps playing over and over. 

Sometimes it starts playing first thing in the morning before I know anything. Sometimes it gets me when I’m halfway through an email in work. And it feels like my blood has turned to ice. Because I feel the flutter of happiness at the thought of how I felt in the beginning, how astounded I was at my own luck. I remember feeling so lucky. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was that I’d found him, and that he’d found me. All because of how he made me “feel”. We were both so sure. We were both so adamant. This was it. We’d found one another, as we were meant to. The happiness I remember feeling was so golden, so pure and true, that sometimes the fear that I’ll never experience it again takes my breath away. 

But I recently realised, that I don’t want to feel it again. Because the happiness in the beginning that made me glow wasn’t true. It wasn’t based on lies exactly, but it wasn’t based on truth either. 

I digress. 

His visit was everything I expected and hoped it would be. That night he met my friends. My best friends. We went for dinner and drinks and then played pool. When we got back to our hotel he asked me to be his girlfriend. I said yes. 

We enjoyed the finer details of being in one another's company. Asking if the other wanted a cup of coffee and being able to make it. Watching TV with my head in his lap, him stroking my hair. 

A few days into my trip I brought him into my family home. He met everyone. That night, in my bedroom, he told me he loved me. In person. For the first time. I said it back, meaning every word with everything I knew and felt. I knew in that moment that he would never leave me or hurt me. That I would marry this man. We were meant to meet that night in San Francisco. 

I may write more entries on various moments from the trip; I don’t think it can be dissected in it’s entirety in one evening. But all I can say is the trip was perfect. He met every single person in my life, much by accident, we just happened to be in the right place at the right time. 

We went to Amsterdam together for a few days, and it was the most normal thing in the world. With him, I felt at home. When it came to the night before his flight. We lay next to one another in my room crying. We eventually fell asleep, and woke to an early alarm. Time to go. 

Before we left, my mum said good bye to him, and she was crying too. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive that. Not her. Not him. Me. That I brought someone into our home that made her cry at the thought of him leaving. Because she believed it too. She believed the love story. And it broke her heart too. I want to scream at him now when I think of it. Trick me. Lie to me. But my mother?  My family? My friends? 

My mother is a woman who doesn’t trust or believe at the drop of a hat. And she believed him. It breaks my heart into pieces. 

I drove him to the airport. It’s so odd to think this was actually the last time I saw him. We cried some more. We kissed and hugged. I drove home, but felt calm and okay. Because I knew we’d be fine. I knew we were going to make it work. So I wasn’t worried. He kept me updated on his journey, and it was like normal. Hearing from him often. He was texting me telling me he loved me, that he missed me already, that he didn’t plan on leaving my mind any time soon. All of the things he’d said before. It still felt amazing to hear them. 

Like I say, at the time, I couldn’t believe how lucky I was. It puzzled me every morning as soon as I opened my eyes, but I wasn’t complaining. 

I look back now, and it breaks me to see how weak I became over time. How pathetic it turned. How his words changed, but more importantly, how they changed me. 

I think the saddest thing in all of this for me, is how often this happens. It will happen every second of every day on this earth. People everywhere, having their trust and love crumpled into nothing. It’s an everyday occurrence, and I don’t feel like we acknowledge the damage it can cause.