It was a Monday night. I was new in town, I just got my nails done, looked through the lonely planet... Pretty good reviews of the bar right next to where my apartment was, why not?
So there I was, in my tracksuit... having an apple martini. First of all, I don't know anyone in this city. Secondly, I don't really care what people who hang out at bars on a Monday night think about me.
The bartender took pity on me (I think), she bought me 2 drinks after I took forever trying to figure out the exchange rate. I guess wearing a pull over from a crap university along with horrible calculating skills makes you look like a poor little thing but if this is what gets me free drinks, I'm wearing this every time I leave the house.
2 am. I'm still sitting by the bar alone. They turn on the lights, they start playing fuck off songs and then one particular song came up and I find myself singing to it and I wasn't the only one.... I look to my right and there he was, right at end of the bar.
Oli and I had such a tempestuous relationship, it would have made a roller coaster look like a joke. We'll fight for 2 days, not speak to each other for a week and then spend the whole weekend after naked under the sheets. We had absolutely no trust in each other. He stole my number of his then bi-sexual girlfriend's phone who had been "on to me" that same night. I didn't see it as that, I mean someone asking you to "hang out" and go "shopping" isn't exactly an invitation to munch on her carpet or is it? Conveniently "dumps" her and by that I mean don't pick up her calls and lead her to believing he had gone to Germany for some rather urgent business and changes the locks on her by our 3rd date, you could see why we couldn't possibly work this. I woke up on him checking my emails by the 6th date. I had his ex-girlfriend/semi-girlfriend or whatever you call her crying outside my door one night ... and this was when I pulled the plug and called my landlord to move the fuck out of there.
Towards the end, he came by my new apartment (making him promise he kept my address a secret from his psycho girl) with a bottle of vodka. We both knew it had to end somehow. We looked at each other and all we could say was.. What really went wrong?
The both of us just desperately trying to find that very feeling that we had, the "special" connection we felt the first time we met... or with that other special someone.. We both fell in deeply in love once. Not with each other or the partners we were with.. but some one from the past and trying to re-visit that was harder then we thought and when that didn't work, we drank ourselves into believing that it did.
We had so much baggage of our own, I think deep down, we both knew we were using each other as an excuse to not face up. It was easy to just sing to that same song, get completely fucked out of our heads. Did we really want to do this or were we just finding that other someone that left us a long time ago in each other?
I remember how he would always use whisper to me "If you don't sleep, its easier to wake up." He would stroke my hair and tell me this over and over again as I desperately try to sleep. I finally knew what he meant on that last night.
We still talk now. It's quite obviously we make much better friends then lovers. He still makes fun of what I was wearing the first night he met me. All in all, I'm glad I made the decision that night... Well, I just couldn't do it. I couldn't live a lie that I myself can't keep up with.
