F*@k it , that's how I feel about the year that is finally coming to a close.
I am quite certain that something clicked into place in my head on New Years day, which said, go forth and destroy this life you are sinking within. Take this life you have built and kick it really hard, see what survives, then finally you might just wake up and get a life back that you want to live.
So I got really drunk. Not an extraordinary event in itself, but I was determined on that day to be the leader of the pack, to be the one who got more twatted than anyone else, well more so than my girlfriend, who I had spent seven and a half year lifting out of various gutters. This time I wanted to be the car crash, and by doing so I could finally walk away from the pileup of our relationship.
New Years Eve itself started out in a fairly dignified fashion, dinner at a friends seafront flat. Earlier on my girlfriend and I had met up for drinks in the pub with neighbourhood friends, who I would be stalking later in my mission to be mistress of all chaos. By the time the midnight hour was clocking in for its annual shift, said girlfriend had passed out and I left her where she lay, as that time shift occurred so did a gear in my head. Grabbing friends who were 'up for it and able', we skipped off to the nearest 'open all hours' bar and marvelled at the bar mans response when asked 'what time do you close?' To be told Monday, when it was still Saturday was like signing a blank cheque to chaos. I finally made it home by 8am, having negated the possibility of staying in said bar for many days and needing a change of scenery, but still marvelling at the beauty of possibility. By the time I reached home, it occurred to me to check my phone and found many messages from the hippie, one of my oldest, dearest and nearest mates. A phone call later and he was making his way round with several bottles of wine and sparkling alcohol to welcome in the dawn. A day of full thrust debauchery then unravelled itself, with the front door to the flat I shared with my girlfriend spinning like the entrance to Selfridges in the sales.
The girlfriend had by this point come to and was home to watch in amusement as, 'for the first time ever, I got more fucked than her'. I don't think I even noticed she was there, I wanted my friends there. Six month's earlier we had come the closest at any point to breaking up. One week after we had performed a Paul Daniels moment and managed to buy a flat together, said partner tells me our 7 and a half year relationship is over. I in my shock and and distress found the reason by searching her PC records, she had been having an affair for months.
We pieced things back together, but even if part of me could forgive, I could not forget and I knew I would stay for as long as I wanted to, and when I was strong enough, I would then walk away. The irony is that during that time my girlfriend fell head and scooped out heels back in love with me again. But all too little too late, some broken pieces just can't be put back together again.
So the nonchalance in my head started to creep into the reality of my life. The New Years Day debacle continued most of the day and all I could see was my partner looking on in bemusement, and all that was in my head was 'you just watch'.
I obviously had the hangover from hell and back in the following week. The weeks were blanked out, only intercepted with my weekly 'chat with my confidente'. The boy, who I turned to last summer, when I first found out about the affair. I knew he had gone through the same thing with his ex-wife, figured he would be a good listening post. He was, and someone who had been a friend on the outskirts of my life suddenly became my close up hero.
I got a temporary contract in London early in the year, taking me away from home for a month or so, which acted like another edging towards my step back to my own reality, rather than the madness of my relationship.
The problem with being in a relationship which is deeply dysfunctional is that it is not always like that, and that is what your natural human instinct will hold onto. My girlfriend was wonderful in many ways, in many other ways she was not. We certainly were doing each other no favours by staying together. My girlfriend was a manic depressive, with what appears to be bi-polar, although she hasn't been officially diagnosed. She had a couple of affairs and I was laterly to find out had shagged most of her friends during the time we were togther. She is a very heavy drinker who turns into a violent bully -when in that state. Which was at least once a week. When she was sober, she was funny, caring, insightful, beautiful bright and sarcastic. We were soul mates, but that soul got drowned and suffocated somewhere between the bar and the next beer.
The turning point came on St Patrick's Night. The usual evening of heavy drinking kicked off, hanging out at the local Irish with good friends, sipping on the black nectar. My best mate was there, some other girly friends and the boy. Something changed in the tempo of my friendship with the boy that night, and ironically enough it was all started by the girlfriend. Sex was the topic of conversation and she seemed to want to go into great detail about our sex life with the boy. He's a boy, he isn't going to switch off. After the pub we headed off with best mate to a party at his cousins house nearby. The girlfriend was on classic form, and after almost launching herself into the open fire in her drunken spin out she thankfully passed out. So again I left her. The boy and I had been cuddling up at the cousins house and I knew, when he started whinging for a snog, that that was exactly what he was going to get. Been a while since I'd done it with a boy and if it was going to be anyone, it would be him. Back at his house we snogged as friends blindly chattered in the front room. They left and I was in charge. All I wanted was to be with the one person with whom I felt safe and that was the boy. He was so drunk he would have done a back flip if I asked, but as it is we ended up in bed. Chatting and snogging and being silly for ages, then I guess there is only so long clothes are going to stay on in that situation. The weirdest thing I thought at that time was how good it was to snog him. I have snogged lots of my mates and it's kind of 'oh that was nice' anyway let's go shopping. This was very different.
We didn't have sex that night, but came damn close. I panicked and knew that if I fucked the boy then that was 'it' with me and the girl. When I woke up the next day naked and wrapped around the also naked boy, I left without waking him. Head in pieces with hangover, confusion and amused shock, but not an ounce of guilt. I knew that if I told the girl right there and then that morning it would all be forgivable. But I didn't want to tell her, this was something for me and it made me for the first time in years feel strong. I don't screw around when I'm in a relationship, so to do this screamed so loudly to me that this was finally over. The girl finally came to in the house she had passed out in and came home armed with lots of lush food and smiles full of love for me. Two days later I was in the pub, again with the boy, having lied to the girlfriend about where I was going that evening. We'd exchanged a few 'Oh my god!!!' amused as hell texts. But I wanted to see him.
That night we did have sex, how inevitable was that. We both knew what we were doing in that pub, sitting talking about sex, flirting and saying we make really good friends. Pretending that you are one thing to each other whilst wanting to be something else becomes more difficult the drunker you get and the boy and I were certainly very good at the getting drunk bit. The one very important segment of this story that I have missed out is that the boy has his own girl. Prior to us ending up in bed together one of the biggest segments of our friendship was him talking about his dissatisfaction with his relationship and how he had to get round to finishing it, or sorting it - much as it sounds like a loud of bull - he thinks he is talking to his lesbian friend. Obviously his ego went into overdrive after we had fucked a few times. The truth is it was quite odd to suddenly find myself shagging a bloke, I think it was down to two things - trust and someone so different to the girl that I could finally walk.
So there it was ready to to spill out, the girl didn't know, she knew there was someone, but she couldn't work out who, then of course, she found out.
