Here’s What’s Been Happening …

Why does everything happen when my blog breaks? I say my blog broke, it was my own fault. Something about hosting and a bunch of other shit I don’t understand. It’ll be back soon, but in the meantime I’ll just be sat here storing away post after post. As soon as it comes back, I’ll share them all. I will. Although I say that every time yet I seem to have a hundred and one blog posts here that I started to work on but never quite found the time or need to publish them. What do you do with all the old ‘drivel’ (as I call it) that you write and never post? Delete it? Post it at a later date? Answers on a postcard … or just on Twitter / in the comments below.

Just last night I started a blog post, a rant really, telling you all about this sinking feeling I had. It was like this big black cloud was hovering over me, and I couldn’t work out what it was, why it was happening, or how to make it go away. To say that it was frustrating would be an understatement. I also think it was having a definite impact on Bear and I. We’ve been bickering quite a bit. Little bickering though, not big bickering. Only the little cute fights.

The topic of Brown Eyes keeps getting brought up. Somehow, in some bizarre way, he seems to come up all the time. A friend I hadn’t spoken to asked me if we were still dating the other day. Nothing out of the ordinary there, I guess. My love life has been a constant source of confusion for friends and family for many years. I’ve given up trying to explain it now. Unless they’re Insta-famous (as in, on my Insta), there’s no point in people knowing about him. You know? I guess that makes me look perpetually single. Probably not a good thing.

Following on from that, I was out the other day, just nipping into town to get some essentials, and I swear to God I saw him. It was just a fleeting glimpse, he was in a car I didn’t recognise so I don’t think it was him at all, but just the fact that it could have been him, or that there was someone out there who looked quite like him, stopped me in my tracks.

I’m not over that man. 

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t touch him now. He’s bad news. I know he’s bad news. I know that if we were to get back together, I’d probably be throwing something very special away with Bear, and I’d also be making a very big mistake. I might not ever get out the next time I get sucked into his vortex of hatred, but there’s a little part of me that really, truly wants to believe that he really IS the man I thought I’d fallen in love with. I know he’s not, that those wonderful faces he showed me were just a charade, an act to cover up the fact that deep down he really is a cunt. But fuck me, I don’t half miss him sometimes.

The constant reminders of him haven’t stopped either. He’s in the “You may like” bit on Instagram, his tattoos shared by someone else, or by another tattoo shoutout page. He’s in my WhatsApp when my mum sends me yet another screenshot of some bullshit he’s posted. She doesn’t follow him either, but for some reason he seems to permanently pop up in her “You may like” bit on Instagram too. And then, just like me (and most of you lot), she can’t help herself. She’s gotta have a look. Following that, torn between desperately wanting to share the gossip and keeping her daughter’s heart safe, she ends up telling me all about it.

And if it’s not my mum, it’s one of my female friends. The one who still thinks that perhaps me and Jock should get back together. That female work colleague. Yep, she knows Brown Eye is crazy, but she also knows that I’m a little crazy too, and we have a tendency to gossip about things like the men in our life rather regularly. She just desperately wants to see me settled down and happy for a change.

And Bear keeps bringing BE up too. Too regularly for my liking. He’s found him on social media, and they even have mutual friends. It’s freaking me out. I’m getting freaked out. What is fucking happening?

I thought I saw BE’s van the other day. I’m pretty sure it’s not even on the road, and I’m also pretty sure he’s bought a car now. But that brings me back to the fact that I thought I saw him in the car the other day … Now I’m wondering. Is my mind making all of this bullshit up? Are these tiny little coincidences? Or was it him? The van or the car?

He’s still driving me nuts. That’s the thing that gets to me the most. He’s still managing to get me – get at me and to me – despite being blocked everywhere. Despite having absolutely no way to contact me, he’s still managing it.

And then something else happened.

I’d had a shit few days. Bear and I have been having little fights here and there, mostly because we desperately need to see each other and something always gets in the fucking way. And it’s cold. I hate winter. Bestie and I have basically fallen apart. In the process, he’s taken most of what I thought could have been my friends, and all of my social life, with him. I’m starting to realise just how lonely I am, how few people I keep close enough to class as friends. I used to like it that way. Now I’m just really lonely. I feel like I want to get out, but a lot of my friends have stopped inviting me places now. I never turned up, I was always sick. But now I’m better, or at least managing my sicknesses, and those friends have had babies or are married now. I’m self-employed, so when I have free time everyone else is at work. I’ve started to wonder if I should get a part time job? Something to get me out the house and interacting with the outside world once again? I can’t stand most people though … It’s a tough one.

But in my lonely state, and I apologise for the above load of drivel, I stalked him. Brown Eyes. I wanted to steal one of the quotes I’d spotted on his page that my mother had brought to my attention for the post I told you I’d started writing last night. Three hours before I got there to steal that quote, he’d posted something new. I saw it. It was a picture of the tattoo he’d gotten for me after our first date, with just two words.

“Miss ya”

Why? Why would he do that? He’s blocked from seeing anything I can put up, but he’s a smart guy. I’m almost 100% sure he’s had multiple Instagram accounts before, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he had another Instagram account to stalk secretly. I had my account on lockdown for a while, and I started to get follow-requests from accounts with zero information on them – no photos, no bio, no followers, or following … I wondered if some of those could have been him?

But he must know I’m seeing someone now? He must know about Bear. It’s not like I haven’t posted little things. There’s a selfie of us for a start, and parts of his body are in the background of my photos – his arms on the other side of the dining table, for example. I even refer to having a “man” in two posts, one of which is displaying my new boyfriend’s art stuff.

So … why? Bear’s a pretty intimidating looking guy. I wouldn’t fuck with him. Missing a tooth, a skinhead, and with multiple and visible tattoos … He’s my cup of tea, but he’s not everyone else’s. I know that. So why is BE fucking with us? With Bear? Because Bear knows BE’s social media deets now, and he’s going to see that post.

Fuck. He’s going to ask questions. He’s definitely going to ask about the date on the tattoo which, even I admit, wasn’t that long ago.

Help me. Help me. Please, help me.

I thought he’d gone away. Things have been super quiet for a really long time, and I genuinely thought he’d gone away. I wasn’t thinking about him. I wasn’t stalking him. Yes, he popped up in my thoughts every now and again, but this time, when that dark cloud loomed in … it was like I knew he was going to do something. After days, weeks, of not looking at his social media stuff, I take a peek, and just three hours before that, he posts something about missing me? That dark cloud looming over me, the fact that I was writing about him just last night, and now today … this … that Insta snap.

I decided to tell Bear about it. I was honest too. Probably not my finest hour, and probably not the greatest decision I ever made, but I couldn’t not. I’m a really honest and open person, and keeping a secret like that would drive me nuts. It became the only thing I could think about, and as much as I tried to avoid it, it took just three hours before I picked up the phone and called him. Actually called him. Without hanging up this time.

And that’s when he got really pissed …