My Mumbling Thoughts

Life is hard.

That has been my motto for the past couple of weeks. But it really isn't.

So much stuff has already happened in such a short period of time I really wouldn't know where to begin or how to even end it. It's almost as if I've had three different lives all compacted together in about two weeks time.

I suppose I just start then....

Lectures have been alright, work is still there, so are the buses and the people, yadda, yadda, yadda....

I found a new boy. And then I lost him about six days later. We would randomly see each other around uni all the time; at the bar, at the library, Fez club, walking around campus, at the bop, at the shop where I work and then finally on a sidewalk one evening when he asked for my phone number oh so nonchalantly.

It was so slick, so on the down low, so smooth, so completely out of nowhere. I wasn't expecting it in the slightest.

Boy: "So, um, I was wondering...are you single?"

Me: "Yeah. How come?"

Boy: "Well, because I was thinking of asking you out sometime. Would that be cool?"

Me: "Yeah, that'd be cool."

The next evening, I received a text message from him. I was out with my co-worker, Paloma and her friend, Rosie, watching the rugby. England was playing France in the semi-finals and we had just won. England would be going into the finals to play South Africa. The atmosphere was electric and I was feeling good. I was also feeling slightly buzzed from the cider I had been drinking throughout the evening. We proceeded to text each other for the next two hours until I finally made it home and met him at my bus stop...

...to chat. And watch a film. And drink red wine. And have what he liked to call a "midnight snack." Twice.

Yes. It means what you think it means. And the snack, just for the record, was really good.

I spent the night in his t-shirt. We had long chats about everything. He was twenty three-years-old, in his second year of uni like me and was studying education to be a teacher (I know!). I got roughly about twenty minutes of sleep before I did the walk of shame back to my flat and got ready for a ten hour shift at work. I was absolutely shattered when I finally made it back home.

He was supposed to cook me dinner the following evening, but he asked to re-schedule since he was so tired from the night before. I didn't really have any complaints about it since I could barely lift my head to text him a reply. Monday we were supposed to get together, but he cancelled since he was tired again. Tuesday he had other plans and Wednesday I didn't hear from him at all.

It wasn't looking too good. It was looking like a classic Love You Then Leave You situation for me. I felt so stupid for even believing for two seconds that he actually meant what he said. Oh, we could do this together and we could do that together. We were just going to have so much fun.

I felt like a dick and my fear was confirmed on Thursday when I found out that he had a girlfriend. Not while we were together for that very brief moment in time. Oh no. He just picked one up apparently on that Tuesday. So THAT'S why he was busy and couldn't make me dinner? He was busy with his new girlfriend, Rachel.

They studied education together and he wanted to try and "make it work." Of course he would want to try and make it work.

I waited a couple of hours before I text him my reply which simply said, "Um, congrats I guess? I want my shirt back."

I would have been absolutely fine if he would have said that it was just a fuck thing and we could have parted ways peacefully. It would have been a clean break and I wouldn't have wasted an entire week of my life wondering about yet another stupid boy that managed to get inside of my brain. It just annoyed me that he had to say all of that extra stuff about "us" together, doing things. Was that absolutely necessary? Did he think that I was one of those women that wouldn't be able to handle the fact that we had a one night stand? Why did he have to go through the effort of making me think and wonder and actually, slightly get my hopes up? I didn't fall for him, but I was placed on that path. I could have, and that's what bothers me the most about the entire situation.

I could have fallen for him...and he yanked that away from me.

In order to get over the fact that I was blatantly used, I went out into Camden that Friday and had a proper one night stand with a boy named, Jim. He was also twenty-three, but he installed air conditioning units for a living and was a terrible lay. So shit. He left the next day and we did not exchange phone numbers. And that was a-okay with me. I preferred it that way. That's all I wanted. Just meaningless sex with a stranger that I wouldn't have to see or hear from ever again. No extra bells and whistles and going on about what we were going to do together. No sir. It is what is and that's that.

I was chatting about it with Boy Sam one evening, because we're friends now, and that's the kind of things that friends chat about with each other. He said that it could have been worse; he could have lead me on for ages.

"What, like how you did me last year?" I said to him and smiled.

"Haha. Very funny. It doesn't matter though, 'cos we're going to have sex one day," he said to me with a sly smile.

"Whatevs, man. I'm never going to have sex with you."

"Sure you will. It's bound to happen."

"Oh really? Why do you say that?" I asked him while taking a pull on my Magners.

"Well, I figure we're going to know each other for a good few years, and it'll happen one of those days."

"You seem so sure about it. I don't think it'll happen. I won't let myself go there with you again."

"Yeah you will. I know you still think about it," he smiled to me.

I just rolled my eyes.

I confuse myself and am absolutely positive that I make things a lot more complicated than they really need to be. But why, I just have to ask why...why is it always the ones that are bad for you, are the ones that you always want to be there when you're at your most vulnerable?