Saturday, 14 February 2009

• I Wish I'd Ditched You on Valentine's

  I was driving down to the coast when I got your message. It was a damp day and the spray from the cars in front kept me occupied. After a while, I managed to wriggle my phone out to see what you had sent. I was not pleased by what confronted me.

  I had told you before that on this day I would be driving a hundred or so miles to do some errands, namely picking up an important package (unrelated to this story) and visiting my Nan, whom I didn't get to see very often back then and who could have quite done with a nice visit. I had already told you that I would be around for the afternoon and that we had dinner booked at our favourite restaurant. So, to be faced with a message threatening to ditch me if I was sitting at home watching sports on the telly, I was decidedly irritated to say the least.

  This was not the first time you had threatened breaking up over stupid possible indiscretions, none of which ever actually occurred. Remember the threat if I talked to my friends about our private activities? Remember the threat if I got drunk at the party you weren't at and did anything with another girl? I'm not even known for doing those sorts of things.

  However, I put up with the regular threats and arguments you'd throw into the air every few days because I loved you. I truly did, with all my heart and soul and everything I had. Little was I to know that you would decimate all this only months later, leaving me in pieces right in the middle of my final school exams. Perhaps, if I had been stronger, I wouldn't have been so heartbroken and utterly torn apart by you.

  I see now that it was this experience that made me into the strong person I am now and that I probably wouldn't have gotten through the far worse experiences to come had I not first learnt to recover by losing you. Still, I wish I had been stronger already. I wish I had stepped up to your front door and shoved that lovely bunch of your favourite flowers right into your hands and said, “There's your stupid valentine and you won't need to be giving out anymore threats because it's over!”, before turning around and walking back to the car.

  Granted, the first year was amazing and the change happened so slowly, I didn't even notice at the time until it was too far gone. You started pushing and pushing so hard and every time, I'd try my darnedest to make things right. You meant the world to me and I would have done anything for you. I know now that there is only so much of a relationship that one person can and should be expected to hold up, especially when the other side is only trying to drag it down at every opportunity. Never again will I put up with the emotional torture you put me through. Never again will I take that heartache for the pittance of love you tossed my way on your whim. I know these things now but still, I wish I'd known them then, so I could have saved myself that pain, that total internal collapse, that heartbreak. I wish I'd been strong enough to say no. I wish I'd ditched you on Valentine's.

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