Tag Archives: love

Surprise

6 Mar

I’m pretty confident that nobody will read this post since I disappeared off the face of the earth for 18 months. I can’t just waltz in and out your blogging lives like this.

If anyone does read, I wanted to update you on life because this sad little blog has a happy, happy ending.

And I’m going to write more. I’m going to write my happily ever after. But today – for reasons I won’t go into – I read a few old posts. They broke my heart. For myself. For poor, agitated, heartbroken me just trying to get through the day and living the agony out here on WordPress. And for those who went through it with me, with their own scars to bare. And for anyone putting jaunty little terms such as “How can I get over a broken heart?” into the Google and landing here on Pizza of Doom.

I am struggling to even remember how to use WordPress. It’s been entirely too long.

But the short version of the past 18 months is this: I am living in Brooklyn and working in Manhattan. I don’t miss London, but I do miss my friends. Work is great. I’m traveling a ton. I’m getting pretty good at copywriting in American English complete with missing “u”s and “z”s over “s”s. I’ve made great new friends. I’ve put on a humiliating amount of weight, but – hey – the food in this country is too delicious and plentiful. I’ve also met a wonderful creature in the form of my boyfriend. The love of my life – my best friend and absolute soul mate. He was made for me. I truly believe he’s the reason I had to go through everything I went through. To get me to here. Both physically and emotionally. I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with him.

My dear blogger cats, I hope you are all doing wonderfully. I wish happiness and love and amazing things for all of you.

And I promise to start a new blog. Maybe something a little lighter like being a Brit in NYC. I don’t think pain and sadness becomes me. Damn, maybe I’ll just blog about The Bachelor. What those girls could learn from me…

 

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The ability to believe

30 Sep

Well, buddies, the ‘Sex and the City’ gorging continues.

Tonight I watched an episode where Charlotte and Carrie attend a seminar about finding love. It’s about positive affirmations, and putting yourself out there. Because if you hope for love, you will find it. If you believe that you deserve it, you will find it.

Charlotte asks how long she needs to do this for. She says she’s been doing positive affirmations, and putting herself “out there”. But it’s not working.

She says she did find love. That she had a wonderful wedding. And then everything fell apart. And she is, “afraid that he took away my ability to believe.”

That’s how I feel.

I didn’t have the wedding. But I did find love. I loved my ex so much. Truthfully, a large part of me still does.

Lately I feel that there isn’t anybody for me. I know I’m an amazing girlfriend. I know I would be a wonderful wife, and a wonderful mummy. But I just don’t think it’s going to happen.

How can I believe that love is out there, when the only time I’ve experienced it, it was fake?

How can I believe it when he took it away?

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A very peculiar Tuesday (and let me remind you again to go for your smear test)

16 Sep

Today was weird. Apologies if a fairly weird post follows.

Today was the follow up from my “abnormal” smear test. I went over to Homerton Hospital for a colposcopy.

The last time I was in Homerton Hospital was just days before the pizza of doom. When I came back from New York, peeing blood with terrible cystitis, and had to haul myself over to ‘accident and emergency’. I remember not feeling that my ex was particularly empathetic. I had no idea he was planning the break up. But that’s another story.

The colposcopy wasn’t nearly as bad as I had worried it would be. Honestly, not even as bad as the smear test itself. Once I was positioned right with my legs up in the air, I relaxed. It felt like a yoga pose. I like yoga. I could do this.

Bonus, I got to watch it all on a big screen and the doctor talked me through what she could see. All was looking fine and dandy ’til she put in the dye. And then my cervix started to resemble my throat when I had tonsillitis. It wasn’t too pretty a sight.

So what does it mean? There are abnormal cells there that could be pre-cancerous. They took a biopsy (which felt quite unpleasant). Those cells will go off to get tested and in four to six weeks I’ll find out what’s going on down there. Then, I might need treatment. Or all might be OK for now.

If this all sounds a little disjointed and unsure, it’s probably because that’s how I feel. Suddenly, a lot of information comes your way. Terms you’ve never heard of. Things you’ve never considered (can I go swimming after my biopsy?). And I have every reason to believe that everything will be fine. But who knows.

I came out of my appointment today, got on the bus, got off outside my flat, came upstairs, and cried for about an hour.

I emailed my friend, who emailed back with words of absolute sense and reassurance.

I went to a restorative yoga class (which mostly involves lying on the floor, relaxing).

I came home, made pasta, watched the news.

And my ex was front-of-mind the entire time. If we were still together, what would he be telling me? What would he be doing? Would he show the same lack of empathy he did back in July last year, that morning that I found myself at the hospital, in agony?

In so many ways I love living on my own. But I’d really like somebody to talk to tonight. Even a cat.

Like I said, it was a weird day.

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Friday with Friends: Liz

5 Sep

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Okaaaayyyy. So I’ve not been too fabby at writing this week. Life is still quite hectic and I’ve been on a bit of a downer. 

But I was not missing yet another Friday with Friends slot. So here goes my second day handing my blog over to a blogger buddy to do with it what they will. 

Today my blog belongs to Liz. Liz is 24. Man, I remember being 24. She just started her first proper teaching job (yay, Liz!). And, to cut a long story short, I think we are partly the same person. If she didn’t live so far away in Maine we would be hanging out regularly to drink iced coffees, buy scented candles, and talk about cats and boys. We bonded over our broken hearts back last year. But I don’t worry about this girl. Because I know she has oodles and oodles to show the world, and she’s going to make some dude very happy one day. She’ll probably be married way before I am. You mark my words. 

I found Liz’s post quite painful to read. Because I’m sad that she’s gone through this. And because when she describes the physical side of grieving her relationship, well, it’s identical to my experience. But – ever the maturest 24 year old I’ve come across – she knows how to learn from it all. And how to move on.

So, over to Liz:

Last September my five-year relationship with the guy I adored, the guy I pictured a family with and loved with all my heart, came to an end. We had been fighting a lot, more so than normal, and yet it still knocked the wind out of me when it happened. I remember sitting in the middle of the living room floor holding a pumpkin Frappuccino in my hand, and squeezing it so hard that it started overflowing all over the carpet. “It’s just not working anymore,” he said.

At the time, I remember not having any emotion. I didn’t cry, talk, or try and fight for our relationship. Instead I just let us go. “Why fight for a relationship that he had already thrown away?” I remember saying to people.

It wasn’t until about a month later, the beginning of October, that it hit me. Why wasn’t he coming over on Saturdays anymore? Why wasn’t he calling me to tell me goodnight? Why wasn’t he smiling at me from across the kitchen table, telling me how “Do You Realize” by the Flaming Lips reminds him of me, that after all these years I still give him butterflies? I felt empty, I was losing weight, my clothes didn’t fit me anymore, and I couldn’t eat. I cried for months, couldn’t sleep for months, and had nightmares every single night where I would re-live him leaving me, telling me that he had had enough.

I finally went out one night to go to a mutual friend’s birthday party a couple months after the breakup and that’s when I first saw him. I remember staring right at him, right through him. I remember his blue eyes, and I could see how much he hurt. I went through one, three, six Grateful Dead’s until I was slurring and couldn’t stand on my own. I needed to leave. I left the bar and started walking home, through the city and past my friends who were shouting, “Liz, do you need a ride?” I walked down the sidewalk, and then he was there. His passenger door open and a whispered, “Liz, just get in, I’ll drive you home” was heard.

I didn’t say anything in the car and neither did he, but all I wanted was for him to say that us not being together anymore was wrong, a mistake. He walked me upstairs to my sister, and when I stumbled in I shrunk to the floor and cried so hard my body shook. I knew he heard me, I could hear my sister outside the doorstep asking what he did. Why was I like this? He asked her if breaking up with me was the right decision; she said she didn’t know. I wish to this day that she had told him “no.” I laid on my bed in the fetal position, weekend after weekend while I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed, drunk and heartbroken while my sister rubbed my back, and whispered, “it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

It’s taken until now, a full year later, to feel at least a little bit like myself again; to think of him without crying, to hear a song on the radio that he loved, or even go to a restaurant that we went to without being too miserable to continue. I remember going in to a grocery store and smelling cigarette smoke, and sprinting to the bathroom to throw up because it smelled like him, it smelled like our past. Sometimes I still feel like this.

I think maybe he thought he didn’t mean anything to me, that our relationship had somehow gone numb. Maybe he thought that my reaction a month later, after I had time to process everything, was just about the chase. It wasn’t. It was about me realizing what I had lost, realizing how much I messed up and not being able to take it back. If I could somehow reach back through the past I would tell him, I would tell him over and over again how much I love him, that he’s my favorite person, that I wish we could make this work. I would believe him this time when he tells me that he thinks I’m beautiful, I would tell him that he still takes my breath away, that he still haunts my dreams. That he means everything to me. But I don’t do that, I just move forward, but it never really goes away.

If there is anything that I have taken away from this, it’s that next time I’m in a relationship, with whoever it is, I need to be more honest. I need to say what I’m thinking, feeling, dreaming – because emotions are difficult for me and I know that, but it’s not an excuse to be ungrateful. It wasn’t an excuse for me to act like my love for him didn’t make me woozy. I need to try not to take any part of such a beautiful relationship for granted. I need to be thankful, because if there was just one thing I could go back and change it would have been to tell him every single day how lucky I felt to be with someone who loved and cared for me as much as he did.

I have a lot of people to thank for pulling me through a horrible time that I thought would never end, but continues to get better every day. My friends who have listened to me over and over when I’m sure I’m obnoxious, my family who have insisted that it will get better. More than anything I need to thank my blogger buddies who have related to me more than a lot of people ever have. April is one of those people.

So, thank you.

 

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What we’re all really looking for

31 Aug

Well, buddies, I haven’t posted in days. I even missed my next ‘Friday with Friends’ slot, despite having a great post from my blogger buddy Liz. You’ll have to wait for next Friday for it. Sorry for the delay.

I’ve been busy, you see. Busy at work. Busy in general. And in Scotland all weekend. I came up for a friend’s 30th birthday party and also managed to catch up with a few other friends, and spend some time with my parents. Now, I’m on the train back to London. Somehow I’ve managed to book myself onto the train that stops pretty much at every station on the way down the country. It was supposed to take six hours. We’re running late. Which gives me a lot of time to think. 

This weekend and saw and heard of several people who recently went through bad break ups who have now met new lovely people. I’m happy for them. It makes me feel glad inside. Genuinely. And it gives me hope that karma and fairness and all that other stuff is out there in the world ensuring that people get what they deserve. However, that also makes me question whether karma forgot me. 

It’s been nearly 13 months since the pizza of doom. I haven’t been single for this long since I was 24. And it’s not just that I haven’t met anyone, it’s that I have absolutely no idea how I would ever meet someone, and no faith that my heart is going to kick back into action. Which, in turn, leaves me wondering if there’s something wrong with me. How do I get my heart to move on? Sure there have been flutters over the past 13 months. Irish Two made me flutter a little when we first met. A friend I had connected with through this very blog gave me a few little flutters. But Irish Two has no capacity for emotion. And that friend, well, he pretty much ignores me these days. All of which reinforces my heart feeling more bruised than anything. 

I think I deserve for something nice to happen. 

And I fully appreciate that many of you reading this are probably thinking, “You silly girl, pull yourself together! Move on! You have a good life and great stuff going on!”. 

Sure, I know I do. 

But we all know that lovely feeling of sunshine moving through you when you meet someone new. Waking up feeling joyful. Going to bed feeling loved. 

I love yoga and swimming, but they are no replacement for having someone’s arms around you, and looking forward to adventures together.

If longing for that makes me a bad person or selfish or ungrateful for everything that I have then I think we are all bad people and selfish and ungrateful. Because I’ve seen in people’s faces this weekend how a new relationship can change them and bring them back to themselves.

And I think, deep down, we all want that.  

 

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The lost “I love you”s

24 Aug

I’m tired.

I spent the past week dating like a crazy person. And when I wasn’t dating, I was swimming. Also tiring, although much more satisfying.

So tonight I climbed into bed early. Into freshly washed sheets. In a newly cleaned room. But I cannot sleep.

My mind has been on one of its wanders and has dredged up a memory that feels sweet and acutely painful all at once.

My ex and I struggled to sleep while cuddling. So we’d have a good snuggle up in bed (and sometimes more, although not on school nights since he decided it was too exhausting), then we’d say goodnight and fall asleep with just our feet touching. And as we turned over to our separate sides of the bed, we’d get comfy, then whisper, “I love you” to each other.

Ok, so it turns out he never meant it. But it felt real at the time.

In my opinion, everyone should end every day that they have here on this crazy planet by hearing “I love you” from someone.

Love is why we’re here. And however your day has gone, whatever the next day has in store, hearing “I love you” is the greatest reassurance that you’re meant to be here. It’s a promise. It’s praise. It’s someone feeling that your whole being that lies next to them is worthy and wanted. It’s someone missing you even for the seven or eight hours that you sleep.

Other than from my lovely friend Jennie, I haven’t heard “I love you” in over a year.

And you know what else? I haven’t said it either.

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Date night number three

23 Aug

I’m on my way home from my third date this week. Don’t judge. I haven’t dated in ages.

Anyway. I am yet to snog anyone.

Last night and tonight were the same story. Nice date with nice guy who tried to get romantical but I did not want to get romantical with them.

Now is the hard bit. When I leave the date, and my mind starts to wander.

Will I ever find anyone who I like the way I liked my ex?

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Thanks again, Facebook

18 Aug

I woke up at 3 am.

I’ve been sleeping great recently, so this was unexpected. I tossed. I turned. And finally I decided to check my emails. I don’t know what I was expecting. All I got was a bunch of junk from LivingSocial. 

So I checked my Facebook. 

First news story: someone from school had a baby! Second baby, I might add.

Second news story: someone from school got married. 

Third news story: someone from school is on a dream holiday across the US with their gorgeous fiancé. 

F***. Off. 

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Renovations

10 Aug

It’s all been happening here at April Towers.

Everyone tells you to redecorate after a break up. I wanted to. Oh, I really wanted to last August. But since I was incapable of standing for longer than twenty minutes or so, it made DIY a little tricky. Where do you find the wherewithall to pick wallpaper when you erupt into tears while trying to choose a shampoo?

A year later, I can do it. Top of my list is replacing my carpet. For regular readers – yes – the same carpet that he trod paint into.

But it struck me that Pizza of Doom itself also needs a little spruce up. After all, times have changed. I’m a year on. And while I’ll admit that I cried a lot this afternoon, I’m changed for the better and stronger than I’ve ever been.

So I’ve rewritten my ‘About’ section to keep up-to-date. Like Grey’s Anatomy, I hope that Season One was just the foundations for what is going to be an increasingly exciting, heart-warming and fascinating tale. Minus the bombs and planecrashes and all.

I think I had to change on the inside before I could change on the outside. Today I even considered a new haircut. But, let’s not get crazy. My hair is already fabulous.

 

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Once year since the break up (and happy birthday, Liz)

3 Aug

Today is the doomaversary. It was the night of the 3rd of August last year that everything fell apart.

I’ve been thinking long and hard about what to do to mark today. In truth, I know it’s just another day. It isn’t going to tangibly change things. But, for me, it’s very meaningful. It feels like crossing the finish line. I officially got through the worst year of my life. And I’m coming out smiling. Yay me.

I asked you all a few weeks ago what I should do to mark the occasion. Obviously pizza had to be involved, and tonight some friends are coming over to eat pizza with me. Homemade pizza, because it’s better than the takeaway stuff he was obsessed with anyway. But what else what else?

One of my dearest blogger buddies recommended that I think of today as her birthday rather than the doomaversary. So, happy birthday, Liz. I hope you enjoy the title of this post. You, my friend, are a perfect example of one of the loveliest things to have come out of this whole mess of a year: new friends.

Another terribly clever blogger buddy (who I can always rely on to call my ex the ass that he is), suggested that I write him a letter telling him how far I’ve come, and post it on here.

I straight up loved this idea. But when I sat down to write it, hmmmmm, I found I had nothing to say to him. Nothing at all.

And, you know what? I love that feeling.

So, let’s focus on something and someone more important: let’s focus on me.

I cried a little this morning. Not because I missed him, but because I remembered how horrifically sad I felt last year. I went over the evening of August 3rd 2013 in my head and it made me want to go back in time and give myself a big hug and lots of reassurance. So that’s what I’m going to do.

Instead of a letter to him, this is a letter to the April of August 3rd last year.

 

Dear April on the 3rd of August, 2013, just after 9.30pm

Sit on the floor. Put your head between your legs. Try to stop the room spinning. It will stop eventually, and you will get your breath back. I know it’s scary, but this is your body dealing with trauma in its own way. And you’re supposed to feel this way: the man you thought you were going to marry just broke your heart.

You’ve never felt like this before. You can’t make sense of it. And for the next two days you aren’t going to sleep at all as you go over and over and over and over what’s just happened. You’re going to tell yourself that it will never feel as bad as it does in this moment. Unfortunately, that’s not quite true. Right now you’re in shock. When that wears off, the confusion will kick in, then the sadness. I hate to tell you, but you’re going to feel sad for a very long time. You’re not going to sleep properly for a very long time. Go to the doctor. He can help.

At your worst, you’ll wish not to wake up in the morning. You’ll stand on train platforms wondering what would happen if you just stepped forward. Months from now you’ll come to a plateau where these thoughts stop, but you have no idea why you’re alive, or why you would want to be. Because life has no meaning when you’re alone. And if he didn’t want you, well, doesn’t that mean you’re worthless?

You’re not worthless. You help people. You care for people. You make people smile, and there are people who love you. He says that he never did. But your parents do. And your best friends do. And that doesn’t make you pathetic. Because the people who know you best see the good in you. He was blind. And a c***.

Five weeks from now you’re going to start your new job. Two days before, he’ll call you. Because it would be beyond him to realise what bad timing this is. It’s going to be tough. Prepare to hate this job for the first few months. Your confidence just hit rock bottom. How are you supposed to concentrate? But be kind to yourself. Because a year from now you’ll look back and feel proud of how you stuck this job out. In fact, it’s going to rank right up there with your greatest achievements, just the fact that you got out of bed every day and made it to the office. You’ll have been to Boston, New York and Paris with work. And you’ll be planning a trip to Belgium. You’ll have made new friends. It’s a challenge, but if anyone can deal with that, you can.

Christmas will suck. Just saying.

Do what you know how to do. Find your therapy in your writing. Start a blog. You’ll find friends in the strangest of places. You’ll build your support network. And when it comes to support, the bigger the better. You can try new things too. You don’t know it yet, but you really love yoga.

You’re not going to fall in love again in a hurry. For a long time the very thought of someone else is going to make you feel physically sick. But there will be other guys. To date. To kiss. Someone will come along and have the best sex of your life with you. He’s not boyfriend material, but he’s going to turn out to be a good friend. Trust him. He’s odd, but he means well.

If there’s one thing I want you to know right now, it’s that it will be OK. But not for a long time. So don’t panic if you’re still crying months for now. You were madly in love. Take comfort from the fact that your feelings were real. You know what love is. And you need to grieve to move on.

Next spring the darkness will lift. In the sun of next summer, you’ll plan a new future. You’ll get involved in new activities and realise all the new people who have come into your life.

I can’t tell you if this will ever stop hurting. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen to you. I can tell you that opportunities will come your way. And that maybe not knowing what the future holds is more exciting than a future with a man who never loved you, anyway. I can tell you that you’re too good for that.

And, I promise, you will eat pizza again.

Lots of love,

April on the 3rd of August 2014, just after 3.30pm

 

 

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