That Fucking Pager
The Fireman wasn’t a fireman when we met. He joined while we were together, and it was such an exciting adventure at first. I was dating a real-life hero; what could be better than that? The one thing I don’t think I was prepared for, was that fucking pager. It basically ruined my life.
Difficult
Things had started to get a little… difficult between Fireman and I. We were arguing a lot, and we’d had a couple of interactions that had made his mum interrupt and give him a bollocking.
“No, you don’t push your girlfriend!” she’d said, and I loved her for it. She always stood up for me when it counted. She was more on my side than she was his, her own son!
Fireman and I started to explore life together, but also separate – also known as settling into “real life.” We stopped spending all of our time in bed and started hanging out with friends, work colleagues, etc.
It didn’t take long for the rumours to start. He’d been seen in a bar with a girl that was “well known around town” (not my words.) They might’ve kissed. They might’ve gone into the bathroom together. They might not have done anything of the sort. It wasn’t exactly a small town, but it might as well have been. The Chinese whispers spread fast, twisting and contorting as Chinese whispers do.
Arguments started, then went on for days. He didn’t want to talk to me, then I didn’t want to talk to him. We spent more and more time apart, and fucked less and less. It was the start of the gradual decline, but neither of us knew that then.
That fucking pager
I think that fucking pager was a novelty at first. Look at my boyfriend, he’s such an important man – a HERO! My heart would race whenever it went off, and I’d do the jobs that he’d reserved for me: trainers by the front door, keys on the couch, can of Red Bull next to them. It was a ritual that we become accustomed to, a job I was proud to do.
No, correction: that he became accustomed to.
That fucking pager went off at all hours of the day and night, as they tend to do in that line of work. It woke me up at four in the morning, then left me incapable of going back to sleep, completely decimating me for my 9-5 job. It went off during nights out, parties, cinema and bowling dates, sex, dinner, bathtime, bedtime, grocery shopping, pretty much every time you could think of.
I was tired and cranky, so I’d start fights.
He was tired and cranky, so he’d start fights.
Drunken nights out turned into a boxing ring, each of us pulling out the things that had pissed us off throughout the previous week. I’d done this. He’d done that. Blah blah blah. We ended up ruining several family events, date nights, and even dinner times.
Honestly, we were both completely insufferable.
Looking back now, I think we outgrew each other, as young relationships often do. We’d loved, laughed, experimented, fucked, argued, made up, then broke up again so many times – but those times had run dry. We kept repeating the same miserable merry-go-round, arguing and breaking up, then fucking and making up. Rather than accepting that, though, we milked that relationship dry, of every last fucking drop. We kept coming back together when we should’ve been healing and moving on, and we both knew it. We just couldn’t stop it. It’s almost as if we were addicted to each other.
It was toxic as fuck, but we didn’t know about toxic relationships then.
Hindsight is a damn fabulous thing, isn’t it?
The next blog post in the dating timeline is this one: The Foursome That Wasn’t.
Thank you so much for reading my little blog today! 🖤
You can read all about The Fireman, from start to finish, right here.
If you’re in the market for something else to read, why not take a peek here:
