Tag Archives: starting over

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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Your life just changed

6 Apr

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Goodness gracious. Weekends should really be at least three days long. This one has just flown by, and I really need to get organised for going to New York on Friday, but I feel very much not at all organised. Not one bit. Distressing, because life is about to get very busy for the next few weeks with work and trips and visiting friends.

It makes me think how different my life is from how it was last year at this time. And from how I thought it would be right now. And how I thought it would turn out in the future.

I’ve been talking to a new breakup buddy, which makes me think back a lot on the early days after the pizza of doom. The days when I actually wanted to die. I know it’s a terrible thing to say, but I did. I would never have done anything drastic or silly. But I wished to just not wake up in the morning. Tricky when you can’t get to sleep in the first place, mind you.

Anyway, the thing with break ups is that nobody has died. Your relationship has died. Or – as it can feel under certain circumstances – it’s been brutally murdered. I think one of the things I found hardest to deal with was the guilt. How could I feel so sad and cry so much and wish myself dead when the rest of my life was just fine and dandy? Shameful. Shame on me for feeling so sorry for myself over a boy. I still feel that way now.

But back in those early days one of my friends said something very true and very useful to me. When I was sobbing on her shoulder and hating myself for doing so, she told me, “It’s OK to feel this way. Your whole life just changed. Forever.”

She was right. There isn’t one aspect of my life that wasn’t affected by this. One conversation – one unexpected conversation – and everything got turned upside-down, back-to-front, rattled around and ruined. I’ve had to piece certain bits back together – finding my confidence again in my job, starting my new job without his support, making my peace with being the only one of my friends without someone, trying to reimagine myself in my own family as a single unit.

Hardest of all, I have to rethink my future. Because the future I thought I was going to have, and the future I wanted more than anything, is gone.

My whole life has changed. Forever.

You can’t underestimate how hard that is. But you can hope that one day you’ll realise it’s for the better.

 

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Irish Three, Part Two

24 Mar

Text message received the day after the date:

“Hey. Just slept on this…I’m probably being naïve about inter-web dating but I guess I wanted a little more chemistry. It kinda felt like we were good mates rather than on a date. Sorry for being crap. I did really enjoy meeting you. X”

No problem at all, Irish Three.

I’m inclined to agree.

And thank you for the drinks and dinner.

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Irish Three

23 Mar

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Last night I went out with Irish Three.

I wasn’t over-excited. But I did have a suspicion that he’s my future husband (mainly based on the fact that a fortune teller told me I would marry someone tall, and he’s tall).

He picked a cocktail bar not too far from where I live. Which was great because I love this cocktail bar, and he lives wayyyy on the other side of London. I was flattered that he made the effort to come in my direction.

And we had a really nice night. We talked non-stop. We laughed a lot. He’s a really good-looking guy. Nice manners. We went on to dinner. He was super polite and insisted on paying for everything – a far cry from the wiley ways of dear old Irish Two.

Then, I suggested that we grab one last drink. It was 11.45 by this point. We got into the bar, and he suddenly decided he had to run to get the last tube home. Fair enough. I didn’t take it as a great sign. Walked him over to the tube, said an awkward but friendly goodbye. No kissing. He asked me to text and let him know that I got home OK. (Again, not the kind of thing Irish Two would have worried about.)

So there I was, on the 56 bus at midnight, slightly drunk, listening to Taylor Swift, and thinking over the evening. I definitely like Irish Three. I definitely wanted to see him again. But I also wasn’t sure I felt that crazy spark. You know the one. Ahhh, The one I felt with my ex (Irish One). Irish Three called me beautiful and cute while we were out, so I at least didn’t think he considered me hideous.

Irish Three had talked a lot about how he’d never done online dating before and I was his first online date. So I figured I would take the lead. When I got home, I texted and said, “That’s me home safe and sound. Thanks for such a lovely evening, I had a lot of fun. Since you’re new to online dating, I’ll take the lead and say that I’d love to buy YOU dinner if you’d like to do it again. X”.

Hours later I got a response.

“I had a really nice night too. X”

WTF is that supposed to mean?

I won’t be replying to Irish Three.

He now strikes me as someone who would take his sweet time buying a ring.

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Something that happened last year

6 Jan

I haven’t been writing as much recently.  I haven’t really felt the same need to get the nasty things in my head out and onto my laptop screen. Because there haven’t been that many nasty things hanging out in there. Honestly, my darkest moments come when I dwell on the amount of cheese I’ve eaten over Christmas and the fact I fear I have put on around 100 lbs.

It’s dark and dreary outside, but in my head springtime is already here.

When I saw my counsellor before Christmas she said, “I’ll see you in the new year. And the new year can do all sorts of things to people.” I wished her a Merry Christmas and scuttled off down the street thinking how silly she was. It’s just a new year, after all. It can’t change anything.

I should have known better.

My counsellor is never silly. She’s an absolute fricking genius.

Indeed, I feel different. I feel better. I feel more like me.

I always knew – even through the depths of my sadness – that there would come a day when the pizza of doom was just something that happened to me once. Finally, I’m starting to feel that way. 

And I love being able to say that it was, “Something that happened last year”.

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An empty weekend

20 Sep

Week Two of the new job. Done. And, although I still feel I am completely messing it up, it was definitely easier than Week One.

I now have a whole empty weekend stretching in front of me. All my friends were busy tonight, so I walked home. I listened to The National and cried at all the songs that I had never before realised were quite so sad. And as I walked, I made plans for the empty weekend. Plans that involve more than watching TV and crying.

Tomorrow I’ll go for a run, I’ll catch up on Teen Mom, I’ll take my laptop and sit and write in a coffee shop, I’m seeing a friend in the afternoon, and at 5pm I’m seeing another psychic (anything to feel better right now). Tomorrow night I guess I’ll take it easy and watch a movie or something. Sunday is all about massage and cinema. I’m going to see ‘About Time’ which I’ve been told is truly awful, but Wedding Boy thought it was incredible so I said I’d check it out myself and give him my critique.

I’ll be honest, I wish I was spending the weekend with my ex. I wish we were going out to dinner to celebrate my second week, and that I could talk to him about everything at work, and kiss his face. I reckon he’s probably dating again by now. But that makes me think maybe it’s time for me to put up an online profile at least. I don’t need to do anything. It might just keep me entertained.

In the meantime, I made a stop on my way home. I bought myself a huge bunch of flowers and a small bottle of prosecco to say, “Well done on getting up every day and going to your new job.”

I realise that buying myself flowers probably marks me out as a loser, but – hey – nobody else was going to do it.

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Sinking

11 Sep

Sorry for the melancholy post tonight, buddies. I’m struggling to stay afloat.

I’m trying.

I still wake up at 4am every day. I tell myself not to think about him. Or I watch Netflix. Or I read. I end up crying, going over and over and over and over the same conversations.

But I’m trying.

I weigh myself and think, “Well, something good has come of all this.” I look in the mirror and know he still didn’t want me.

But I’m trying.

I tell myself I have great hair. I remember him and his brother discussing this very point. And I miss him.

But I’m trying.

I go to work at my new job and plaster on a smile and act super confident. Which lasts about ten minutes.

By lunchtime I’m sinking.

It feels like I’m disconnected from my body, bouncing off my own sides. My body and my mind and my heart are not my own. I get slower and slower as I try to get my work done. I fall behind schedule. I get angry with myself.

I email my friends, desperate to hear anything that makes me feel reassured and loved and unalone.

I wait.

And I’m sinking.

I hear back and feel myself float a little.

I read their words and I float a little further.

I see friends after work and they make me smile, and laugh, and they tell me I’m worth more than this.

And I’m trying.

I get home, and there’s a weird sense of calm. Another day done.

I go to bed, so tired that I melt into sleep with ease.

And at 4 am, it begins again.

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