Knockout

I could feel it in my bones; this was going to be painful no matter which way it went. I could feel it.

I slipped into my clothes cautiously; dark eyes, red lips. Friends all around me, the ones who knew me knew nothing was well in my head. This was the night that I was simultaneously bowled over by the three people I have shared a bed with in the space of three hours.

Let’s start with the first blow to the stomach. Minimal damage; temporary pain, but still pain. I began the evening with Kat, she’s been here through everything.

“You’ve been so much better since the whole Ben and Mark period” I denied the evolution of any form of independence, “no really, this is time for you A, even now things with Cas have finished, this is your time” she was a bit tipsy at this point so I’ll excuse this: “this is your time to shine!” Christ…

We walked through town; she stumbled with affectionate clichés as I attempted to take them seriously. We walked past a restaurant which has the entire outside wall made out of glass, displaying Cas on a date with The Fit Girl like a window display of ‘Look what you could have had if you weren’t such a heartless detached bitch’. I caught his eye; thank God that only Cas was facing my way… because my OTT drunk ‘omgomgomgomgomg’ face must have been a picture worth displaying on its own.

This wasn’t particularly hurtful; I never wanted that, I’m still pretty sure I don’t. I bounced back, got back in the ring.

Jittery would be the one word to describe me that fateful and destructive evening, unlike my usual routine of bursting into the pub with a look of confidence, look straight ahead, even if you are looking for people, and skip straight to the bar(I think I look lost without a drink in my hand, and I also think this may directly correlate with my inept ability to stay sober). Instead I cautiously stumbled into the building, darting around for a glimpse of the one person I was really hoping wasn’t going to turn up, despite the fact that we had briefly sent texts regarding this very event; this one person was Ben.

And of course he did, looking as pretty as he did when he left. I think I may have inwardly swooned when I saw him. Last time, I failed you dear reader. I completely wussed out of any form of contact with Ben, in my defence though I did have Mark as an excuse not to talk to him. But now I have no one. No one to excuse me from this emotionally torturous task.

I did it though, I manned up, bit the bullet. And it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. In fact, it was quite nice. I sound sad, but it was nice to just see him, and break the tension that had developed severely over Christmas. We sat on our own chatting for about 20 minutes, avoiding his friends who really REALLY hate me. It may just have been because he was drunk and I was on my way there, but we were quite touchy feely flirty, like as soon as we saw each other. He touched my waist, sat really close to me, pushed the hair away from my face and around my ear. I thought he was going to kiss me; then he told me...

“So how’s your love life then?” retorting to the very question he had just asked me, the one question I’d been dying to ask him, the only answer I was interested in.

“I…have a girlfriend” he said very matter-of-factly. DUN-DUN-DUUUUUN! this bowled me over, the verbal equivalent of being punched really hard in stomach.

“Oh” I left promptly after this monosyllabic statement. He seemed happy about telling me, he seemed like he was thinking about her and was happy. He didn’t tell me much about her, just her first name. I don’t know what I was thinking, Ben is a relationshippy person. We were together nearly two years, before me he had a girlfriend, his first proper girlfriend, for 6 months. Of course he’s found another one. I’m just one of a lifetime worth of girlfriends. Even though I nearly went two and half years of essentially being in relationships involving Ben and then Mark; people don’t consider me a relationshippy person, I don’t consider me a relationshippy person. Ben however, is. He slurred “we are so different” at one point during our conversation, he was bang on with that conclusion.

Anyway, back to the ‘Oh’, this pretty much rounded up the conversation, apart from him saying how at uni “you don’t have to be in a relationship to sleep with someone”, did he not realise that I knew this? I mentioned Cas. I think he thought I didn’t actually know this, let alone whether I’ve tried it. I hugged him, said how good it was to see him, kissed him on the cheek and left the club.

I got up and I left. I walked right out of there. It felt good, me walking away from Ben for once. The old me would have stayed and kept coming onto him until he wanted me again. I’m pretty sure I could have still got with him. But remember that strut that Cas was on about? Yeah, I did that. In a perfect world Alanis Morissette’s ‘You Oughta Know’ would be playing in the background.

Some time later that evening/early hours of the still drunk morning I find out that after I left in a “I’m like FUCK YOOOOOOOOOOOU!” manner, Mark decided to get with one of Ben’s friends. You remember, the ones that really REALLY hate me..? She’s super hot as well, brilliant. This event brought me down a peg or two. I had been trapped in a conversation with my mother earlier that day, and when I say trapped I mean literally trapped in a locked and moving car. She likes to question me about my love life when I have no exit strategy, and began to do so to her general standards of interrogation. I told her the truth, I have no love life.

Mark: “What did your mother say then?”

Me: “She was saying that I’m so scared of getting hurt by people that I shoot myself in the foot. I try so hard to be unemotional that guys end up thinking I don’t actually want them and do something to hurt me anyway. I nearly cried, fun times!”

Mark: “That does sound fun”

Me: “Was I actually like this with you? Was this what happened? And there were other factors too such as getting scared of being trapped in a relationship etc. It was a really nice car journey.”

Mark: “In a way yes that is what happened”

Me: “In a way..?” Should I just drop this?”

Mark: “Well half the time you were acting like we were together and then half the time you treated me like crap”

Me: “I think it was because I really really wanted to be with you but then I was worried about getting stuck in another relationship. Bipolar-esque I know. I’m sorry for when I treated you like crap.”

Mark: “Meh, I got over it ages ago”

OH OK!

Kick me whilst I’m down, thanks.

xAx