I've been thinking a lot lately about my ex boyfriend. The other day I was wondering why I was thinking a lot about him, and I realised that it would have been around this time all those years ago that we started going out together.
And then, I thought back and realised that I think about him at the start of every spring. So just like smells can remind you of someone or something, so can seasons.
That's a bit awesome.
I have been in a very amazing relationship for the past eight years, and I'm not thinking about my ex in any sort of 'lonely-and-wanting-him-back' kind of way. But me and him, we were best friends for a very long time. I think about all my old friends from before, from time to time. I wonder what sort of life they're living.
Edit: I just deleted a couple of paragraphs here, they made our relationship sound a bit too perfect. It wasn't perfect, by any stretch of the imagination. We weren't good for each other. These paragraphs probably made this story less fun as well, it's supposed to be a fun story, not a 'poor me' story.
Anyway, let's get to what I actually want to tell you. I had a few drinks tonight, and I've been remembering my ex. So this combination of drinks and memories led me to this memory - my most embarrassing moment - which involves drink, and my ex.
Back then, we did everything together. We were inseparable. And I had a friend, a very good friend, who lived close by. She was also inseparable from us. We were like the three musketeers. All for one and one for all.
I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty of it here, but you can guess what happened. It was bound to happen. I should have seen it coming but I'm afraid I was dreadfully naive, and completely oblivious to the fact that a man who has already cheated on you, and a friend who has kissed more than one of your boyfriends before, maybe shouldn't be hanging out alone together...
Yeah, so they did very bold things with each other when I was in work, and after a few weeks of them having what I'm sure was, for them, a terribly exciting 'affair', he left me for her.
A week or so later, my brother came to me with the news that my ex boyfriend and my ex friend were down in the local pub... My local pub.
On a date.
How fucking romantic.
Obviously I had to go and check this out, so off I went, and I did, in fact, find them in my local pub.
They were sitting just inside the door, on a double date with a couple that my ex and I would have hung out with a lot. They had been his friends to begin with, but still. This was another giant kick in the teeth. As was the fact that, this being a rural pub, and a weekend night, the place was packed with people that I knew - my friends and neighbours. Kind of humiliating...
However, I took it like a fucking Dutchess. I didn't pour drinks over anyone, or scream, or hit people. I didn't want to embarrass myself, or draw any more attention than necessary. Things were already bad enough.
I stood straight and proud and I asked my friend if she wouldn't mind coming outside with me. She came out and said she's-sorry-but-she-loves-him and all the rest, and I had a little rant about how hurt I was, and then she went back inside.
Then one of my friends from inside came out, and hugged me, and brought me in, to the far corner of the pub, right out of view of the happy new couple. She bought me a drink. And I drank it, very fast.
Then, the whole pub, it seemed, started coming over to me with drinks. Everybody knew what had happened and seemed to have a drink for me. So I started knocking those drinks back, because I knew then that the only thing to do really was to get completely pissed. That would totally fix things.
All of a sudden, after more than a few drinks had been thrown into me really fast, I felt them wanting to come back up the same way... Or even faster...
I jumped up as quickly as I could, and pushed my way towards the toilets, which were just outside the door. Now, if you'll remember, at the start of this story, when I entered the pub and found my ex, he and his friends were sitting just inside the door. So I had to go past them to get back out the door to the toilets in order to vomit.
But the vomit didn't seem to want to wait until I got past them. The vomit seemed to be in quite the hurry to get out of my body.
So. Just as I reached the door, right beside those rotten cheaters, just as I reached out and grasped for the door handle, my other hand firmly clamped over my mouth, that vomit just couldn't wait any longer. I threw up, right beside my ex, and my ex-friend, and my other ex-friends their double dates. I threw up right there on the floor.
And I cried.
And then I ran away.
And that, my friends, is my most embarrassing, humiliating memory. I don't think anything that has happened to me before or since will ever come close.
I just want to add that their relationship only lasted for about two weeks. And yes, even after that, my ex and I started talking again and stayed friends, for a very long time. We even tried to make it work again but that was just impossible. You can't ever get that trust back.
Although, the friend in this story? We met up again years later, and we are very close friends now. Sisters before Misters I guess. We were young and stupid back then. We are very much older and wiser.
So I suppose the moral of my story is, if you get dumped and you want to get drunk, don't do your drinking in the same pub as your ex...? Is that a good moral? I don't know... I know I never vomited in front of an ex again, so I obviously learned my lesson.