Someone on here reminded me of a story about an old girlfriend.
Now in a lifetime you will probably have no more than 3 really important relationships, the rest are mistakes of gigantic proportions... think WMD's.
I had just ended my first such relationship, and quite honestly I was heart-broken. I say heart-broken, but it was more like someone had turned off the lights and turned the heat down, the doors are open and there's a bear outside with a bad temper and big teeth and i am sat on a wet stone chair wearing nothing but a pair of slippers and her navy blue scarf with the tassles on the end.
And when I say just ended... I mean 6 months.
My friends having had similar experience in their hidden past knew the only thing to do was to get out there... It is the only thing to do by the way, well that or eat your own feet, and quite honestly I like my slippers.
Despite not being interested in a relationship, I was aware that i had grown callouses on my hands and I was having to lie to the lady at the supermarket that we needed so much toilet roll because we were making a giant sculpture of a white elephant.
Now, let me tell you, you are never more attractive than when you are not in the market. Years of coming out with witty and original chat-up lines, years of buying drinks and getting the cold shoulder, lets be honest... years of being slapped were forgotten when we broke up. Suddenly i couldn't do anything wrong. When I was bad tempered, they thought i was dark and moody, when i cried I was deep and sensitive, and when I shouted, they imagined a bad boy needing to be tamed.
I didnt take advantage once, no matter how pretty, how funny, how charismatic they were.
I was such an idiot.
There was one girl that I could see myself going out with. I still wasn't ready and didn't want to hurt her by rebounding spectacularly, but I had to start somewhere. Typically, when I least needed it, she fell in love with me in a "I'm ready to jump across the grand canyon because you think I can" sort of way.
It was a nightmare, partly because she was already talking about our future together, which in this case consisted of anything I wanted no matter how daft I made it. When I said I wouldn't marry anyone unless the entire congregation was naked, she told her mum the next day. That was an embarrasing sunday dinner I can tell you. When I said I wanted her to get an education, she started a home-ed course within a week.
It was also a nightmare because I felt so guilty about not feeling anything for her. She was ready to walk water for me, and I wouldn't even make the bed.
The relationship ended tragically 6 months later on a horrible rainy night that I had spent drinking and not telling her where I was. She had rung the hospitals and the police. I was very drunk and very blunt, and to my never ending shame, I didnt tell her until after we had sex.
A few days later when she took the last of her things, she asked me in the hope-eternal if I was gay. I nearly said yes, I know she wanted me to say yes, it was so easy for me to say yes. I just... didn't. There was no homophobia about it, I just didnt want to lie anymore. The one time I could have lied and felt good I didn't!
A few years later I saw her mother in a market. She spotted me and made a bee-line for me straight away. I had avoided both of them since the break-up and this was the first time she had an opportunity to tell me what she thought, in a crowded place, during the day. I looked around like a trapped rabbit but there was nowhere to run. My fate was sealed.
But to my surprise she hugged me close and told me that her daughter had changed so much during our time together. She had started studying, passed her drivers licence, started her own business (something I had suggested on a whim one night because I was fed up of hearing about her work friends), bought a house, married with a young baby on the way. She told me my ex had become a well-adjusted, intergrated, responsible member of society and it had been our relationship that had turned her around and made her focus.
She even invited me to tea, naturally I declined in case it was a trap.
So here's the point.
Sometimes we feel like the devil because of the things we have done wrong. Like there is no chance at redemption and even if we beg for forgiveness our priest will say "hmmm, not sure about this one kid!".
Life goes on though, and our ex's may well have needed this pain to learn something about themselves, maybe that they were to naive, or too needy, or too cocky, or maybe that they need to focus on something they can control.
They may feel pain and terrible anguish, but in the end they will be stronger, more mature, more confident and much better equipped to take on the dissappointments that all life brings.
Any relationship is just another patch on life's private quilt, and it often looks different when you see the other side.
I have had many times when I caused terrible pain, and I have had one important relationship that made me buy new slippers. I would never have gotten through it if it wasn't for this ex. She gave me something else to think about other than the deep never-ending abyss. For that I will never forget her.
Night.
