Pizza of Doom

My dearest blogger friends, again it has been the longest time since I updated you on the surprising tale of the Pizza of Doom.

I keep thinking I’ll just finish. I’ll just stop writing and be done. After all, this was a place to play out my agony with nobody to judge and everybody to empathize. I have no need to write here anymore. Years have gone by since the only relief I got from the pain was putting it out here on cyberspace.

But when I got my annual reminder to update my WordPress payment details in order to keep this domain name, I just couldn’t walk away and let my little blog disappear into oblivion. And, of course, being a nostalgic and self-reflective cat, I started to read the story of April four years ago.

It reminded me that back in those dark, dark days, reading the blogs of others who had been through similar experiences kept me sane. Or maybe I wasn’t entirely sane, but it made me feel sane. It made me feel less lonely. It gave me hope. Just a slither. But hope, nonetheless.

So for any broken, bashed and bruised hearts out there, I want to keep telling you my story, however ad hoc my blogging status may be.

Just over three weeks ago, on the rooftop of our apartment in Brooklyn, my best friend, soul mate, and love of my life asked me to marry him. I sit here writing to you today with a ring on my finger and a heart – and life – full of love and happiness and excitement for the future. I never thought this day would come. It was something for “other people”. It was something “unfathomable”. It was something that passed me by when karma forgot me.

You know, back in that blurry hell of heartbreak, I remember people telling me that I would look back and laugh at it. I don’t. I look back and cry, because it hurt like f***. But I also look back and know that it prepared me for everything else. It made me, well, me. And I like me.

Now, I do realize that life won’t always be smooth and sunny sailing. I know there will be hard times, and tough times, and downright bad times. But I thought nobody would ever love me, and that I wasn’t capable of loving anyone. As it turns out, I fell in love with the greatest human of all.

And if you think that’s good… wait for it… we also got a cat.

Intimacy is a strange and spectacular thing. Not just knowing each other’s stuff: when her period is, how his movements smell after a curry, all the sex stuff. But touching. Simply touching.

Take that away from people in couples and just see how they do without a hand to hold, a finger to stroke their face, a chest to rest your head on.

I have bad period pains. I was up at 4am with them, I nearly passed out this afternoon and ended up back on my sofa with a hot water bottle.

I’ve given up and I’m in bed at 9 on a Saturday.

What I would give for someone to rub my back.

On this day last year, my ex and I spoke for the last time. He decided it was appropriate to do this the day before I started my new job. Asshole. 

We talked on the phone for two hours. I cried and told him for me our relationship had been genuine. He cried and told me he had never been in love with me. 

Eventually we said goodbye, hung up, and I went into town to buy shoes for my bridesmaid dress that I would be wearing to my best friend’s wedding a week later. I remember a couple standing beside me in the shoe shop looking at bridal shoes. I remember being vaguely aware that I was crying. 

I don’t remember anything else until I was sitting on the bus on the way to work the next day. Crying. And realised I was going to be 20 minutes late for the first day of my new job. 

A year later I’m really enjoying my job. And I’m going to celebrate that fact tomorrow with a cupcake. And an Aperol Spritz. 

Yay me. 

So, what’s going on?

Oh, you know, I’m just guest blogging over at Lessons from the End of a Marriage.

I am totally honoured to be featured today on the blog of Lisa Arends, who has been such an inspiration to me since the pizza of doom. If you’ve never checked her out before, now would seem like the perfect time to make yourself a coffee, find a comfy chair, and read everything she has to say. Plus my guest post, of course.