Just get over it!

Back on that old favourite topic again today - H. That's the ex-girl, not the Heroin variety. I state here and now that I have not ever had such a problem. Or indeed been addicted to anything for that matter. Although I suppose love is a kind of addiction. And I've had that a couple a times, so maybe I'm not entirely unfamiliar with it after all. I think I'm rambling... focus... ok, I've got the focus.

I seem to have been thinking about the whole break-up thing a lot recently - and probably more objectively than I have in the past. Don't think it's been triggered by anything in particular, but I just seem to keep coming back to it. And I think there are a load of things that I never really talked about with anyone at the time, so that they just kind of stick inside and fester which can't be healthy - "fester" just reminds me of maggots, and possibly the Addams Family - neither of which I particularly want to have inside me. So I think there may be a few of these posts over the next few weeks until I've got it all out of my system, even if it is painful at times to write about it. Hope I'm not boring too many of you. Don't worry I'm sure I'll be back to my normal nonsensical self soon.

The thing I'm going to talk about today ("today's Lecture is on...") is whether or not I saw it coming. I know at the time it came as a complete shock, but possibly I was kidding myself. Certainly I can look back now and see that there were signs. Here are some signs. I won't claim that they are all genuine, I could easily have been reading things that weren't really there.

Sign 1: She was working very late at work, pretty much every day. To avoid me, or because it was very busy at work (which it was)?
Sign 2: Some nights after work she'd go back to Lod's flat until very late.
Sign 3: A weekend badminton game with Lod that lasted until late into the evening
Sign 4: There were a couple of times when she wouldn't let me even touch her at night.
Sign 5: A semi-overheard phone call to one of her best friends. I seem to remember H asking whether "girl on phone" regretted dumping her long term boyfriend or not. Or I could have utterly misheard :-)

There were other little things too - sometimes you just get a feeling. I pretty much tried to ignore it all cos there was no way I could bring myself to believe things had somehow gone wrong. And even though I knew she was spending time with Lod, there was absolutely no way I could conceive of anything romantic happening between them (since he is a gimp). Especially as I was in love, and thought she was as well (with me). Hell, I probably would have proposed at some point last year. And when you feel that way, it's almost impossible to conceive of something happening that changes your future plans in such a fundamental way.

So I had clues that something might be wrong, but I figured (in my usual way) that if I just ignored them, things would get better, everything would blow over. But it didn't. I don't suppose that confronting her would have made things any better, especially as she refused to admit to seeing Lod until about three weeks later. It would probably have just accelerated the final moment, and at the same time could have made me feel like I contributed to bringing on the break-up myself.

I guess I must have had some contribution to it - these things don't after all happen for no reason, but I don't really know, even now, what I did wrong (apart from getting drunk and falling over at Christmas). Now call me old fashioned, but isn't it normal when you're in a relationship to give the other person a second chance? Or is it normal to come home, dump someone after nearly 5 years, refuse to try and find a way to work things out and then just leave?

So I was just left there sitting on the sofa, trying to understand what had just happened. Absolutely shellshocked. I don't really remember what I did - I guess I could have gone to the toilet (not on the sofa) or had a drink or something, but I think I just sat there for hours. I guess I would have cried a lot. I didn't even resort to getting pissed (that age old problem solver) - I guess I knew that wouldn't actually help matters. I remember trying to convince myself that I had imagined or dreamt the final conversation - surely there was no way that could have just happened? I was hoping that she'd come in later and everything would just be ok again. I think it's a similar thing to when someone close to you dies - you often hear people talking about expecting the deceased to just come back home again as if they'd never died. But it never happens that way (except in Pet Semetary, but I don't think that was based on real events).

Maybe I should have phoned a friend or something and got them to come round, would that have helped? But I didn't want to speak to anyone because telling someone else what had happened would have made it real, whereas if I kept it to myself there was that slim chance that it wasn't real, I'd just been hallucinating, and that there was no problem.

And that was pretty much all I did when I was in the house for the next few days. Just sit on the sofa, and wait, and think, and hope that somehow things would get better, that I'd get a second chance, because I just couldn't accept that I would be able to go on without her.