Sunday night review of the weekend: how many of my objectives have I achieved?
– fixing washing machine – failed. Indesit sent the wrong part. guh.
– doing laundry – achieved. Took my laundry over to my parents and did it there – hopefully by tomorrow it will all be dry and I’ll be able to bring it back. That should give me enough to keep me going until I get my machine fixed.
– drinking beer – achieved. Friday night I met up with Sacha, Tanya, Fi, Nick and Nick’s fiancee Anne, as well as bumping into Leigh and also James W. We went to the Dolphin and Anchor, which was particularly cold and unwelcoming, and then came back here (my place) afterwards.
– going to dinner – achieved. And what a night that proved to be. But all you need to know is that we met at Sadlers for beer, moved to ASK for food, and then ended the evening in Woodies. After Woodies, we went out to Thursdays nightclub, which isn’t usually an experience I enjoy, but it wasn’t too bad, and it was Tanya’s birthday after all. In the end, I ended up back at Ian’s talking about life, drawing and the graphic novel until around 5.30am (walking through the empty streets of Chichester on a damp, drizzly, foggy night, whilst quite pissed and feeling very mournful is about the best mood enhancer I know – I once made a compilation tape to listen to in the car and called in “Late at Night and It’s Raining”, just for when I was in that sort of mood – must dig it out!). So today has been shot to pieces as I didn’t get out of bed until 12.30, which is almost unheard of for me.
– going for walk – failed. The plan had been that Sarah, DAGS and I would go for a stroll on the Downs today and have lunch in a pub somewhere, but the weather wasn’t very inspiring (steady rain and very low cloud), so we decided to go for lunch instead. We went to The Vestry in Southgate, my first time, and had a pretty good lunch. Naturally we sat and chewed things over – it seems that we can’t do anything much else lately.
– college reading stuff – failed so far. Might do some in a while. Have been and purchased the new text that I need to read, so that is something I guess.
– missing Andrea – achieved, needless to say.
– trying to get back on my feet – failed mostly.
It all just keeps running round and round and round inside my head. Things like the thought of the two of them going to the pub together and spending the night together just make me feel nauseous – literally. I’m still so very hurt by the whole thing, that it’s hard to feel any other way.
Sarah went to visit Kev on Saturday, and Andrea was there. She (Sarah) phoned and told me as I was walking around Waitrose, and I had to go and hide by “margerine and butter” whilst I composed myself – it doesn’t look good to walk through “cheese and yogurt” with tears running down your cheeks.
A few things have come to mind – I’m single now, I can’t really see much chance of Andrea ever come back to me (but GOD – I’d give ANYTHING to make that happen). So, with being single and lonely, I guess it’s time to start looking for someone new. At the dinner at ASK, I met Tanya’s neighbour Jodie, who is very pretty. We sat opposite each other for the meal, and chatted extensively. As you might expect, I was flirting away, and was doing quite well (or so I thought) until she said “Well, I’ve just started seeing this new bloke….” which I took as a sign. Hey-ho.
Of course, going out with anyone at the moment would be an absolutely disastrous thing to do – I’m still in love with Andrea, and all I’m really looking for is a bit of company and possibly even a touch of revenge (although I’m not sure exactly what sort of revenge that would be). The thing I miss most of all is having someone to share things with (all I have now is you, dear invisible, unknown reader) – I had been looking forward to dinner last night for a couple of weeks, and it should have been something I’d been sharing with Andrea, with my best mate there too. But I’ve been dumped by one and betrayed by the other, and now they are “seeing” one another. ack. Having a new girlfriend would certainly give me some sort of “defence” when eventually I do meet them again (which I know will happen sooner or later and is something that makes me sick with apprehension), but at the moment I’m quite happy to avoid them – I even have an escape plan should they come into Woodies whilst I am there. Of course, if I did have a new girlfriend and used her in that way, it would be utterly utterly unfair, and not really the way I work.
It isn’t just the special occasions that I miss sharing with Andrea, it’s the everyday things too – sharing meals, sharing a steaming scented bath, listening together to the very good Doves album which I bought just the night before we split and will now always be associated in my head with a time of sadness, meeting up with Sarah and DAGS for lunch (the conversation would certainly have been different!), and, yes, sharing our bed and waking together in the morning. My flat is only small, yet it seems incredibly big and empty without her here.
So what now? Should I keep chuntering on about it on my website on a daily basis until everyone stops feeling sorry for me? I know it may not appear that way, but I am actually trying to be upward and forward looking, whilst dealing with the whole thing from inside, and quite a few people have said that I’m handling things amazingly well – I met a friend in the street yesterday, and she said that I was “surprisingly perky when all things are considered”, which I took to be a good thing. At least I’m like that on the outside.
And then there is the book idea – looks to me like this would make a great story, although possibly a bit Mills+Boon-ish. But then, if it was proper Mills+Boon, the boy always gets the girl in the end, and that seems unlikely from my perspective at the moment.
I jest.
oh I don’t know. I’m quite taken with Gemma’s new beginnings idea. DAGS is going to keep an eye open for any suitable job opportunities in marketing at IBM. Charlotte (from college) is doing a similar thing at Zurich. But somehow those things seem a bit more temporal, and may not necessarily help with the more emotional issues that I’ve got to deal with. So in the end, we end up coming back round to “time”. guh. At least a new job would give me more money, which would be a major-league boost at the moment, as the finances are precarious to say the least.
Maybe just thinking less and doing more might be a good thing.
Either way, I’m going to go and do some reading now – not the college books, as my mind is just not ready to deal with them. Nope, it’s going to be Memoirs of a Geisha, which is a very splendid book, and is certainly keeping my mind full at the moment.