This is where I may struggle to pull memories up properly. Although closer in time, I have suppressed a lot of moments and I haven't dared let anything resurface. But today, I will. Today, I'm putting a shovel into the dead half of my memory and hoping that nothing's still alive.
June 28th 2008 was the first night. Leaver's ball, wine, then Bungay... and that night changed so much. The next day, apart from feeling unshowered and hungover, I genuinely had this air of happiness, and that everything was good, and that the steps I was taking were good steps to a better life.
The whole summer nothing was ever made official. One night Charlotte called him my boyfriend and he awkwardly tried to act like he hadn't heard those words. He bought my friends drinks, and told me that he thought labels didn't matter, it's actions that matter. He never wanted to put our 'relationship' on facebook because of it. We had a good three months together before we both had to leave for separate universities. The night before I left he was supposed to be calling me for him to pick him up and spend our last night together. He was in Southwold, with his friend Amy, who I never met, and never wanted to meet. She seemed like the typical girl-next-door which any angry girlfriend could easily blame for all her relationship problems. Its probably better that I didn't meet her, I guess. Either way, that night, he never called. I tried phoning him, but he had no signal. I was up until about 3am, so angry with him that I refused to sleep through principle. I phoned Aaron, a guy I wasn't too close with, to get Amy's number. He said he text it to me, but it didn't work. I was getting more and more angry with everything. I think I cried with anger more that night than I ever have in my life. Something flicked, and I was sick of his attitude towards me: this casual, unimportant friendship that had some benefits... The next day I woke up to pack and leave for uni, but he finally phoned and asked for me to meet him. I said I didn't have time, so he offered to help pack. We spoke for a while about our 'relationship', and I told him how angry I was with him. He said he understood, and fine - we'll pinch this candle out before the wax spills everywhere.
And then I left. Milli and I got in my car, without a bag of shoes, because it turns out that Ben's packing skills were quite limited, and I drove to Southampton. We were late, due to the unforeseen drama, and missed out on pizza with the new flatmates. That night Milli and I shared my broken bed, tried to move my life into a new city, and I felt, apart from the nerves and crippling fear of having to make friends, relieved. Norfolk was over. I could bury it all in the past, and certain things, like bad memories, unfortunate incidents and unwanted ex's, could stay buried in Norfolk.
But no. Never introduce your new friends to your old gossipy school friend, who proceeds to tell all your most embarrassing stories. Also, never underestimate the affect alcohol can have on a young man who is also a liar.
About a week after moving in, Ben phoned me. He missed me, he wants us to still be friends. He asked how I was settling in, and I was perfectly honest with him: I told him about the three friends I'd made, all guys, all comic-book dorks and proud of it, and pretty spacky, but we all got along, and I liked it. Ben was fine with this.
End of October, and Ben has been phoning constantly saying we should try and make this work. He even speaks to my flat mate occasionally, and she has made up a song about him... it's just his name repeated to a silly tune. I plan my first social event with new friends - a trip to the cinema to see Saw V the day it comes out, with the biggest Saw fan I've ever met. I'm excited, because despite how much I freak out at gore on screen, I'm glad that I have a life of my own at uni, and I feel like a student finally. The day of the planned trip, I think it was a friday, I get a phone call. It's Ben, surprisingly. He says something like 'how's your day off?' and as I go to reply I hear a knock at the door. I walk out and see said boy on my porch holding a rose. I let him in, surprised and overwhelmed, as one is when someone expects you to take them in on a second's notice, and I tell him about my plans for the evening. He says I'll have to just go to the cinema another night, because now that he's here, he wants to spend all his time with me. I phone Matt. He's gutted, and understandably angry. I can't remember what we did, but that night we all did something together instead, me and Ben and Matt and Al and Adam... I think. And possibly Carlo and Maria.... I can't remember. Either way, I remember walking up the road and Matt and Ben were having their first ever conversation, arguing about Gladiator being a bad film.
After that, Ben changed a bit. He was more serious about making our relationship work, asking me to visit him more often (as my flat mate had a car and lived in Guildford too, where her boyfriend also lived, this worked out quite well... twice), but never wanting to make things official and real. Never admitting to the difficulties of long distance relationships. In the next two months, I found my life growing away from Ben in every way possible - I fancied new people, I found my friendship group and they were nothing like Ben and his group of friends. I moulded my life to be mine, and he got angry that he didn't fit in my life anymore. I can't remember when, but we decided to call it a day in early december. I went out about a week later with Maria and her class mates, to Rhino. That night I met Mark.
As a side note, Mark should probably be a whole entry of his own due to how fucked up he was, but I can't be bothered. He was an idiot, he was possessive and controlling and disgusting and eventually wouldn't let me break up with him. I literally had to go to Norfolk to get away from him.
I told Ben about Mark. He knew I had met someone, and slept with someone, but this didn't affect him. It was my announcing on Facebook in January that I was "in a relationship" that pushed him over the edge. He hit the drink for a week and had three one-night-stands. He got angry and finally stopped calling me. He tried to forget me, he got over me, and for a while, we lived without being in each other's lives.
I had tried, unsuccessfully, to break up with Mark, but it was when someone told me I should break up with him that I did. That someone was the reason I broke up with him too. I hated Mark, and I wanted to be with the guy I'd been thinking about being with for so long that it almost didn't seem real when it finally happened. So much so that something went wrong. That week is one of the few moments in my life which I wish I could go back to and change. See how things would have worked. Actually try to do something, instead of just running from real feelings, and the fear of losing a friend. If I'd known then what would happen in the next year... I wouldn't have done it. I know that much, but I also can't change what has happened. Shame.
After that, I went back to Norfolk for the summer, to-ing and fro-ing from Norfolk to Southampton, as I did every summer of Uni. I met Ben again. I looked skinny, thank god, and he missed me. I tried to act nonchalant, but to no affect - within days we were seeing each other again. This time, he made it official. He asked me out, he promised to do more from his side, and during the summer we worked. It was fine, it was good, but then we went back to Uni and it stopped working for me. I felt like I was lost, with one of my best friends ignoring me, a new friend thrown into the mix, a new house, new flat mates (except Maria, of course), new things to try and do and wanting to get a job and not go back to Norfolk so often... That term, I didn't go home once. I saw my parents in November at a meal in Odiham with my brother, but that was it. I was living on my own, doing things my way, and Ben was holding me back. He wouldn't let me live if he was coming down for the weekend, yet would make me feel guilty that he'd spent so much time and money seeing me. This went on for too long. Then... Then I started going out without the girls. My new neighbour was too good at convincing me to go out at a moment's notice, and he'd pick a pair of shoes and t-shirt for me to wear and off we'd go. Cheap drinks, lots of dancing and laughing - the most fun nights out I'd had as a student.
Then it all went wrong. I made the same mistake again. I found a friend who I wanted more than just friendship with. We got along so well, and life was so simple. He'd walk to my door in the morning. I'd never had a friend that I didn't live with to walk to school or uni with before. He'd walk me home after a night out, despite everyone else living seconds away from my house. He had a girlfriend, I had a boyfriend, yet we still did what we did, and broke two people's hearts.
Before I told Ben, I told the girls. They were angry. They told people too, and my nosy flat mate started spreading rumours, which despite being false, actually lead to the correct assumption. Everyone knew, and we didn't stop. I told Ben, and I told him we should break up. I wouldn't tell him who though, because I hoped that there might be something left in our fling apart from just adultery. I was very wrong. It hurt to lose two guys, a lot of friends and two years worth of trust.
Everything got very messy. Ben wanted to be with me still, for reasons I couldn't understand. He didn't trust me, and I knew he didn't, but he wanted to learn to again. I tried not to let it happen, but my friendships at uni were falling apart one by one. No one trusted anything I said anymore, people were talking a lot behind my back, I was totally out of the loop and the final straw was when I felt like my friends, the people who should be able to help me in this moment of need, we literally poking me with their cruelty and bitching. I snapped. I freaked out, unreasonably, and I got on a train. I went to Guildford, seeking the last friendship I knew of, and I found a guy who was trying to be with me. I fell, and I woke in the morning to realise nothing had changed. I still felt lost, and I wouldn't find what I was looking for from him by running back to the comfort of the past. I broke his heart again and left.
Back home, panic had ensued. My phone had died, and I'd text the girl living in my room trying to convey what had happened, but she never got the text. People thought I'd committed suicide. My flat mate had been roaming the streets looking for me. Worst of all, this drove the final nail in the hammer of three friendships. After that, no one spoke to me. When they entered the room, and stoney silence followed in their wake. I could feel cold eyes burning into my head, and I wanted to shrivel up and die for about six weeks. I found the boys, my other friends, to now be my only friends. They took me in, like an owl covering up it's young, and let me rant and rage about the problems I was going through. They helped me find what I'd been looking for the whole time: peace. A quietness, a calmness, in which silence is golden and not awkward, and laughter is shared in any moment, because the first step to feeling better is remembering to smile.
Over Easter I went back to Norfolk, to escape the awkward feelings I got in Southampton sometimes, and to earn a bit of dosh, of course. One evening a friend told me something on MSN which broke my heart slightly. My final nail in my own coffin, knowing that I'd finally lost someone that had once meant the world to me, and knowing that so many lies had been woven for my ears alone, that I broke. I couldn't trust any of the people who I had once spent every moment with. That Easter, I got back with Ben, again. I'm not saying that the two things happened coincidentally... I think my heart purposefully did it.
That Summer I barely spent any time in Southampton. When I was, the times were good, but things were not normal, and the tiniest problem sparked hundreds of arguments. Uni started again, for third year. At this point, my best friends at Uni were the girl who lived down the corridor, and the boy who lived behind me. The three people who lived up the road were like a haze of a memory: the few times that they acknowledged my existence, and spent any time with me, nothing felt the same. Life had changed, and we weren't the same as we once were...
Then, quite surprisingly, my best friend kissed me, and I suddenly I felt feelings I'd never felt for him before. I knew that I couldn't ignore them; more so than lust and desire, our friendship had moved to a new level, and the only option was either embrace it, or turn away from the friend completely. Ben didn't trust me, still, and I couldn't try for him any longer. I told him I was falling in love with someone else. It's the most memorable conversation I've ever had with him, because for once, I was just trying to tell him something, and tell him how I couldn't stay with him knowing that I was falling in love with someone else, so it had to end. Everything ended suddenly. He deleted me from his life. He didn't even appear on Facebook anymore, as if he'd never existed.
I haven't seen him since. It's been a year. My first ever blog was about the friend that kissed me. I found out that weeks after he disappeared from my life, his step mum became pregnant, and had a baby. How did I miss a whole life beginning?
It's symbolic somehow. The pain, the hurt, and the heart break that in the midst of all our varying states of between being in love and fearing each other's faces, I feel like something died. A memory, or hope, or something. After that death, after the burial of that death, came new life. Kind of poignant, kind of cheesy, overall pretty weird. I'm still scared of seeing him though. I know I will be until I do see him... But I don't think, if it was up to him, that would ever happen. Shame. I'll just have to live in fear of his face...