To you out there that have read my blog – the entire 4 entries – I know that I have been away for a while. A long while. Yes…I was writing a post about procrastination (it’s still coming, I promise…I’ll finish it…when…oh, chocolate!) and I have also got a draft almost complete about dieting – however, seeing as the diet was a complete and utter failure, I’m still trying to psyche myself up enough to post it without the desire to go out and drown embarrassment in a tub of Connoisseur Cookies and Cream Ice-cream.
No, I was not in a coma. Nor was I abducted by aliens. I have not been discovered by Miranda Kerr’s modelling agency as “The Next Big Thing”, ‘big’ being the operative word there (plus sized models watch out – you’ve got nothing on my wobbly bits). I did not win the lotto and become the next botoxed-liposuctioned-spray-tanned-socialite to hit the magazines covers, famous for absolutely no reason to other than being *another* botoxed-liposuctioned-spray-tanned-socialite. I also have not turned into a tree-hugging hippie who has decided to do away with all technology including mobile phones, laptops, and the need to wash my hair and shave my legs – my Facebook account is still active, and I will have to, at some stage, inquire about having my mobile phone surgically removed from my hand.
There’s been two major changes in my life since I last wrote – and I feel now, after experiencing them, I should really pick up the pen again open the laptop again (who am I kidding, who writes journals these days?) and continue my writing, or typing, so to speak. I need an outlet.
The first major change in my life – I turned 30. Yes. I’m officially old an adult. I know that adulthood legally comes at the age of 18 or 21, but in my case, I have been putting off adulthood since 2003. Actually, to be more precise, since 1982. My body knows how old I am – my metal state has convinced me that I’m still 16. But it seems that with the change of a simple date, from the 11th of August to the 12th of August, the 12th being my actual birthday, and that one day of moving from my 20′s into my 30′s, something clicked in my head that made me suddenly think “you’re grown up – time to act like an adult”.
The second thing in my life that happened was a break up of a relationship – my relationship. Seems that reaching our four year anniversary and after all the ups and downs we’d been through, it still wasn’t enough to convince The Boy that I was the one for him. In July, we celebrated four years together – and I have to admit, I was stupidly daydreaming that for my 30th birthday he would surprise me with a ring. I didn’t care what size, colour, shape or even type of ring it was (hell, an onion ring from Hungry Jacks would have done!), I just wanted him to and guess, expected, that he would make the decision and make it official, and do it as a huge birthday surprise. Instead, exactly one week before my big 30th birthday party, The Boy ended our relationship on a very, very difficult Saturday morning.
I guess I got my big surprise.
So this will be a two-parter. The first one, dealing with a break-up that I never knew was coming (or, maybe, knew was coming but didn’t want to admit it) to the big birthday bash, and finally accepting who I was.
The Boy, without going into too much detail, has been suffering some anxiety due to pressure coming not only from me, but both sides of our families as well. During every family dinner, meeting, outing, or catch up with friends, or friends of the family (both his and mine), he was asked the dreaded “so, when are you two getting married?” question. Sometimes he was asked twice. Sometimes three times. Sometimes twice by the same people at the same event. Cue me looking expectantly at him, followed by nervous laughter and a lame joke thrown in to ease the tension.
“The day you have to ice-skate to work will be the day that he proposes to me – hell would have frozen over”.
In the end the pressure and anxiety got too much – and he had to step back and leave me. I have never felt such pain – in my little watch-way-too-many-rom-coms mind, I was daydreaming that my upcoming 30th party, which my mother and I had been talking about and planning since my 29th birthday, would be when he might finally ask me. Friends teased me about it. Everybody I invited to my party, asked “so…what’s The Boy getting you? Maybe…a ring?” While I shooed them off with “yeah right!” and “as if!” answers, deep down, I was secretly dreaming, and stupidly thinking that yes…this could be it. Recent events, talks we had, and visits with his family, made me start to think that marriage was just around the corner.
Then again, I am a girl: pre-programed to over-analyse and read into every…single…little…thing a man says or does during the course of a relationship.
Instead, due to the anxiety he’s been suffering lately, he decided to leave me, a week before my party. He needed to, as much as I hate clichés, “find himself”. So instead of a ring, instead of having the boy I love with me by my side at my party…I was suddenly alone, for the first time in four years. I suddenly saw myself as living in a permanent state of spinsterhood.
Just for the record, I didn’t care about a ring. I didn’t care about a huge wedding with hundreds of guests watching me walk down the isle on ‘my day’ in a $10,000 dress. Quite frankly, the idea of being a bride or planning a wedding scares the crap out of me. I don’t want that much attention. The Boy – well, he was the one I had pictured as my husband. I saw him as the father of my children. I saw family holidays together, camping, teaching the kids how to ride their bikes, waking us up in the morning, taking them to Dreamworld. I saw us growing old together, sitting in our recliners and complaining about how back in our day, it was better – the cost of living wasn’t terrible, we worked hard for a living, and the youth of our time respected their elders. Mobile phones were also not implanted into our ears as a second electronic brain – they were a terrible brick of a thing that you could only send text messages and photos and emails on, and kill pigs with birds.
During a break-up, people can survive pretty well with friends. I also have learned that screaming helps. Well, maybe not helps, but you feel like some of the pain in your chest may go away by screaming it out.
Minus details, simplest way to describe it: I hurt bad. I did question how I was going to go on. I felt like this pain that I was going through..was going to kill me.
It’s only been two weeks now, but it feels like forever. I’m slowly getting there – but it’s been hard. Did I ever mention that not only do I work with him, but I work for this father’s company. Yeah. Talk about rubbing salt in the wound.
“Good Morning Girls, how are we today?”
“Your son is the devil and I’m secretly plotting his demise”
“Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. And how are those reports coming?”
The first week I could barely look at him without either wanting to throw myself at his feet and beg for him to come back to me, or throw a letter opener directly at his balls. But for the sake of maintaining a civilized work environment, we are working on being friends. And his family, his father especially, has been fantastic and extremely supportive. They have made it a lot easier.
I also admit, I was not the best girlfriend in the world. Don’t talk to me if I haven’t had enough sleep. I’m more stubborn than an old man. I always have to have the last say, and I am stressed out a lot of the time. I also (and no woman wants to admit this) nag. Girls out there who are reading this…don’t ever nag your partner. You might as well change your Facebook status to ‘single’ right now if you do.
So – for the first time in my life, I’m living alone. I have never lived alone before. I have either lived with my mother, or my brother, or a friend…but never alone. And after two weeks, I have learned the following:
- Some of the best dinners *ever* consist of a cup of soup and buttered bread.
- If you don’t feel like cooking, you don’t have to.
- Washing just your clothes, takes such a short time.
- Beds are lonely places.
- Noises are magnified 10 fold when alone.
- The last piece of chocolate will always be yours.
- You eat way too much chocolate when you’re alone and heartbroken.
- Friends rock.
So here’s to a new start. I have already started making the apartment mine – buying little things here and there to make it feel more like “mine” rather than “ours”. I am replacing anything that used to drive me nuts when we were together. The Boy, for his part, is doing all the things that I have nagged and nagged him over the years to do, like getting rid of the stuff stored in the second bedroom, or finally painting the doors that he installed over two years ago. I guess it’s his way of saying sorry – though our my (I can’t quite get the hang of that yet) unit now smells like paint and turpentine, and I currently do not have a door on my bathroom – but I guess it doesn’t matter now that I have the place to myself.
I had no idea though just how big our tiny unit is – until he moved out. I still sleep on ‘my’ side of the bed though – and I can’t quite bring myself to wash his pillowcase.
But – all in all, I’m surviving…just. I have started a ritual though – getting up half an hour early each day can make the little corner shop each morning – cause the only thing getting me out of bed in the morning – is the promise of starting the day with a Large Skinny Latte.
