A letter to my new Boyfriend

I want to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry that you are having to do the time despite the fact it was him and not you that did the crime… but you see he broke me. I thought I was over it and in so many ways I am; I am most certainly over him. But the way he left,  the fact it happened so quickly despite all the promises . Well it’s becoming clear that it very much still affects me.

He broke me.

I was never like this.

But now I worry.  If I hear nothing from you for a few hours the voices start, and I know it’s not fair on you, but they are so loud. You see the reasons he gave for leaving me was… well everything that makes me me. And those are the things your going to have to learn to love about me;  because they are the quirks that make me me.

I know it’s not fair.  I hate that it’s affecting me; affecting us. I already see how you are better.  Small signs that show me you’re telling the truth, that you are keeping your promises.

I’m fighting for us.  I will overcome this.  But I need you to be patient.  I need you to wait and fight for me;  for us. Because I am.

If you are willing to fight. I promise it will be worth it.

I’m crazy about you and so yours. I see my future with you… I just need time

May 12, 2015May 12, 2015 by 25castleson25clouds Categories: New beginningTags: coping with break-ups, new relationship 7 Comments

We need to talk

I feel like I’ve jinxed it. Literally hours after sharing my post declaring to the world (well you lot) that I am hopelessly in love with this guy, and now I feel we are hurtling full pelt into our first argument. I didn’t even see it coming. In fact I don’t even see how we are there now.

I think it’s him. He has hurt his back really badly and so we have to cancel date night for a while. I am obviously gutted as I miss him like crazy, despite it only being days since I last saw him. I think part of the problem is we don’t know when we will next see each other, it is all reliant on him getting better so we can meet up again. I would go and see him, but at the moment he’s crashing at his parents and it is far too soon to do the meeting the folks bit. So we are stuck, waiting. The ‘brilliant’ doctor that he saw didn’t actually bother to identify what he had done to himself, and so we don’t know what’s wrong or how long it will take to heal.

I think this could be adding to the stress.

Plus he is on a whole concoction of painkillers, obviously in pain and feel bad about being the cause of cancelling the date… so I am trying to be understanding. But after a day of talking back and forth, me telling him I wish I could do more, look after him, see him. Suddenly I have had an attitude problem all day and am giving him grief!

I have no idea where he has gotten that impression from.

I have re-read the messages and I STILL have no idea where he got that impression from.

So the voices started. I know we don’t really know each other, but surely he should know me enough to know I am not like that? I don’t blame him. Then I worry he is trying to control me, my other exes have, so is this some sort of control thing where despite claiming he likes I am a strong, independent woman (a heart-break will do that to you) he doesn’t and so he is trying to change me. What if he is trying to turn me into a shadow… then I worry that if I am thinking these thoughts am I wrong about him being my future, about this being something special… The I feel I should just give him a break, he is ill. Plus I don’t want my past demons to mess up my future. But I didn’t do anything wrong, so why should I apologise? He’s the one who has misread something, shouldn’t he be the one to say sorry?

Funny really. I worried once I was all loved up I would run out of things to write about, but looks like I have can open a whole new can of neurosis!

April 16, 2015April 14, 2015 by 25castleson25clouds Categories: New beginningTags: early days, New starts, Relationships 5 Comments

So this wasn’t expected

I’m not a natural writer; in fact I wouldn’t even go as far to as to call myself a writer. I am a woman who spills her guts onto a blog, which to my continued amazement people read and respond to. The way I right is I have a story that needs to be told, and out it spills. Over time I have tried I shelve one story and write another, and I can’t. The story that I try to shelve almost insists on being written and I fight ‘writers’ block until I just give in and accept that the story is going to published; whether or not I want it to be.

Which leads me to this story.

It’s about a guy. It’s about a guy that I had a date with. (You can read about my pre-first date thoughts here)

Well I was right. It was something. In fact it has become something very quickly… I think I’m in love with him.

(Yes, here is where you send for the guys in the white coats!)

The good news is, this isn’t a one way thing. Due to my phone accidentally dumping the guy after our second date, we ended up in a conversation about how we felt about each other. Yep, second date in (which happened 2 days after the first date) and we are both having a much too soon conversation about how we feel like we have known each other for years, and how we both have a feeling this could be something special.

13 days in and we are officially exclusive.

13 days in and we have banned each other from using the L word, as we don’t want to rush things. Yet I have so nearly already said it to him about a million times.

13 days in and I know he is hunting for engagement rings.

He’s already been to mine, he has stopped over a few times. About 4 days into knowing him I fell asleep in his arms, which you may think is stupid but 2 days in I got into his car and trusted him to surprise me with a day out where I didn’t know where I was going so… (Don’t worry, I am not 100% insane, people did have his photo, car photo, name and phone number… At least if he had murdered me he wouldn’t have gotten away with it!)

I feel crazy feeling like this. I feel even more insane admitting it.

I know that if I am wrong about this it will destroy me; but I don’t feel wrong. It feels so right it is crazy. I can’t believe he has only been around for days.

April 14, 2015 by 25castleson25clouds Categories: New beginningTags: New starts, Relationships 6 Comments

We are pleased to announce…

One of my Uni friends announced the birth of her second child over Facebook last night. However the sentence about “the new addition completing her little family” unlocked a wave of emotions for me. Here was a woman of my age, who is already at the stage of completing her family whereas I haven’t even started mine.

She has done the husband thing, the marriage thing and is not about to do the kid thing for the second time, whereas I am still spending my evenings alone. If life was a race, well she would be seriously kicking my arse.

However, as I thought about it more it dawned on me that I (hopefully) still have all these things to look forward to. While my other friends have settled down into a routine of married life, I still have that part of my life to discover, and in waiting a little longer to meet ‘the one’ I have had some amazing experiences which (hopefully) they never will. The experience of buying my own house was as scary as it was thrilling. I still get a buzz when I look around MY house and remind me that it is all mine. I have done this. I have done this. Not my boyfriend, not me with a husbands help, just me.

I have saved hard and found a house that I knew was right for me.

I have spent far too much time stood in a hardware shop agonising over which shade of blue to paint my house.

I have spent 2 hours stood in a furnishings shop debating over which towel to buy (true story)

I haven’t been completely alone, my parents have been unbelievable and supported me every inch of the way. But at the end of the day it has been me who has made me little house a reality and I wouldn’t swop that experience for an ‘complete’ family. Not now. Not ever. The complete family will come (I hope) but right now I am loving life, and so I need to stop the comparisons, stop worrying about the future and just enjoy the hear and now.

January 16, 2015 by 25castleson25clouds Categories: New beginningTags: coping with break-ups, living the single life 9 Comments

A new look

The observant among you will have noticed that there has been a small change around here, and to be honest I think it indicates a change within me as well.

My old blog design was chosen when I was with the ex. I don’t know what made me choose it. I spent hours trying different designs to ensure I got the blog I was happy with. As a girl who hates change my plan was to make this one blog look ‘the one’. I thought my blog design would stay static, a sort of branding where people would come and visit me and it would become familiar.

To begin with I loved it.

But over the last few months, when I have visited my actual blog rather than the WordPress dashboard I have found my little area of the internet a little dark and depressing. It didn’t really represent me, how I felt or what I am about. So I have played with a few designs and for a while at least I am happy with this one.

It is not yet fully right. I appear to have lost momentarily misplaced my sign up button, which I think is a fundamental need for any blog, I mean if you are crazy enough to want to read my stuff the kindest thing I can do is to make it really really easy for you (plus any time taken for you to search for a sign up button is time in which you can come to your senses!!)

Although my new look isn’t as groundbreaking as unpacking, buying my own house or signing up to date online (which I am going to do very very soon!) I do feel like it is a new start, a fresh venture.

Between you and me, I’m quite excited to see what happens!

October 27, 2014October 23, 2014 by 25castleson25clouds Categories: New beginningTags: fresh starts 4 Comments

Does the fear of making a mistake hold you back?

I’m at a crossroads; in fact I have been for quite a while. I think I have told you before how I am not fully fulfilled by my current job. But having recently found out they are bringing someone in to take over the fun aspects of my role and paying them over twice my wage for the privilege. A slight victory for me is that I have mentioned how upset I am with various managers and when I was told that their intention is I learn from this person and they almost made it sounds like I would finally take over the role. However, I have been promised things before so I am not holding my breath.

I haven’t been happy for a while and had I stayed with the ex my intention was to go back to school to re-train. The plan was short term he supported us both with the view to a long term financial gain for the both of us but that ain’t happening.

So now I have to decide by myself and more scarily financially support myself through this as well. I had planned on giving myself a year and look at training this time next year after I had been settled in my house for a while and knew better where I was. I decided I would investigate each potential job fully and even look at some work experience in the role before fully committing but I do worry that I am never going to make the move.

I am terrified of making the wrong choice. It may sound silly but with a hope of children in the not so distant future I am aware that I need to have spent a number of months or years in a role before being eligible for maternity leave. Then consider my hope to significantly reduce if not totally stop working once I have kids and I don’t know if I will have time to achieve my new career dreams. So I think stay where I am until I have had kids and then re-train when they reach school age, but it could be a long time until I have kids. I know that anyone older than me reading this will tell me not to worry, I’m still young, there is still time but right now it doesn’t feel like it. I feel like I have a massive decision to make and it’s all on me. The ex was always very good at advising and helping me way up situations – hell it’s part of his job. I know I could ask for his help, but I can’t I have to make this decision on my own…. and I just don’t know.

Part of me thinks it’s only 12 months. Just give it 12 months and then start looking. But that’s 12 months of hating my job and clock watching, working alongside someone who is doing the job I want, the job I am partly doing on significantly more money. Talk about feeling undervalued.

I don’t know what to do and it is freaking me out. I can’t make a decision and I just don’t know.

I’ve been through so much over the last 12 months, hell over the last 5 years that part of me wants to tell just stop for a while. But I don’t feel like I have that option. I need to strike now, while the irons hot.. I just have no idea where to strike!

Um, anyone hiring?

August 19, 2014August 19, 2014 by 25castleson25clouds Categories: New beginningTags: New starts, work 4 Comments

I have changed

So when I was having a sort of heart to heart with the ex the other day he made a comment which got me thinking. He said “Do not change”.

Um. No.

I have changed and I am continuing to change. How could I not?

Gone is that ideal view of the world. I no longer feel that love is enough and will get you through anything.

I am cautious about meeting someone new. Worried about the next ‘Mr Right’ walking away with the same ease.

I wonder what it will take for me to once again trust someone; what will it take for me to make a commitment. Whether I will give over the whole of my heart willingly, or will he have to work hard to break down walls that I have built up – will someone even bother? And that’s before I even start considering the idea that one day someone may want to live with me and they will either move into or I will have to move out of my little house!!

But not all the changes have been negative.

I’ve learnt that I am so much more capable than I give myself credit for. Hello, I have taken apart and rebuilt my little house (almost) single handedly. I have learnt how to put the drill bit into my electric drill, hell I’ve learnt that it is called a drill bit! I can tile, and plumb and saw and drill and build and take apart and carry and mend. I have had chances that I would not have had had this relationship continued, I have even felt sorry for my friends who (i hope) will never have to experience this as they moved from parents houses directly in with a fella.

I have spent hours agonising over wallpaper and paint samples. Worried that it won’t look right, or that I will mess it up. But you know what, although I haven’t finished yet it is finally coming together, and it looks bloody amazing!!

I have had friends step up – I now know who my go to girls are. I know which friends haven’t stepped up. I know which are the friendships to nurture and work at and which to stop trying to revive.

I have spent a night in my house alone.

I have bought a house. Me. By myself. It is all mine and no-one (excluding the bank) can take that away from me. It is mine.

I have grown plants, I have killed plants. I have re-potted at 8am in the morning and gone out at 11pm to water the garden.

I have been liberated.

To anyone dealing with a break up I would say embrace and learn from it. Learn from your experiences. Don’t change to fit in with anyones expectations, but don’t be worried about changing either.

I have had my heart broken, and it has changed me. But I’m ok, hell I’m more than ok with that!!

 

July 15, 2014July 15, 2014 by 25castleson25clouds Categories: New beginningTags: coping with break-ups, New starts, Relationships 12 Comments

I’m slowly moving in

I can’t quite believe it but I have sort of begun the process of moving into my new house. I am both thrilled and terrified.

I never wanted to live alone and so this is going to be a challenge for me. I have always struggled with homesickness and I am very close to my parents. I have become settled into my new routine (which is something I didn’t want to happen) and another shake up, which leads to me being alone, is a big hurdle for me. I worry about being lonely, being a lone. I am perfectly contented being by myself, but I am scared that moving half and hour away from friends and family was a pretty stupid move.

I know friends will come visit, I know family will come and stay, I know I can easily manage the commute from friends or families houses to work, I’ve been doing it for the last few months, so I am trying to let go of the stress and play it by ear.

When I moved in with the ex I remember thinking ‘this is it’. I am never going to live with my parents again. Well we all know how well that worked out. I think sometimes by myself, or society putting expectations onto a person we make a situation worse for the people involved.

For example I struggled to cope with University. I missed my folks, many of my friends had taken a year out and so would be having nights out without me, I had started a new relationship and didn’t want to be ‘on the pull’ with the rest of my room mates and having had my drink spiked only a few months before I went I didn’t want to drink or be in a strange bar with people I didn’t know. I’ll admit the first year of Uni was pretty horrid, and I struggled to fit in with women so different from me. So I went home. Every weekend I would go home and drive back to Uni late Sunday night (usually in tears!). I felt like a failure. I wasn’t having the usual Uni experience and it made me feel worse. However, the important thing is that I kept going back, until I graduated with a 2.1 in Forensic Science (I am massively proud of that!)

It won’t surprise you to learn that my folks were amazing throughout this experience. But they had to put up with some comments from friends and family members who thought they were being to soft with me. Comments included ‘I shouldn’t have been allowed to come home’ that ‘all I needed was a little while longer and I’d have been over it’. That may have been true but there is as great a chance that I would have left, never to return, without my 2.1 in Forensic Science.

And so with this move I am doing it differently. I have a friend coming to stay with me this week and so I stop in my new house for a week until tonight on wards. I am yet to decide what will happen when my friend leaves.

My house still isn’t finished, I need to do more decorating, I need to install a kitchen but it is now habitable. I have packed clothes into a bag for the week and then I have decided I will see how I feel.

I am not putting any extra pressure on me or setting a deadline for when I need to be out. I am going to take each day as it comes. I know that slowly this will lead to me moving out and living alone. I don’t know when that will officially happen, it could be next week, it could be next month, hell it could be next year. For the first time I am going to try not to worry about it and just wait and see!

 

 

 

 

 

 

July 8, 2014July 7, 2014 by 25castleson25clouds Categories: New beginningTags: moving house, New starts 10 Comments

How did ‘we’ become this?

We don’t talk, we fight.

 

Whereas once I felt a flutter at your name appearing on my phone screen now I just feel dread.

 

Suddenly we are pulling apart every little fibre of the life we built together and arguing over who gets to keep what.

 

I spend my days alternating between missing you like crazy and wondering how I could have fallen for such a heartless, careless fuckwit.

 

I role over in bed and wish I could warm up my toes on you. Then the pain comes and I hate you for letting me get into this position. If you weren’t ready to share your life with me, then why did you let me fall so hard?

 

We planned future holidays, children, retirement. You took all those dreams away from me in a heartbeat and seem to have done it with such ease.

 

And now you seem intent on making it harder.

 

Any feeling you had for me gone. Any feels I have for you seem to slowly be turning to feelings of hate.

 

I don’t like or recognise who you have become.

 

Was I living in some dreamland?

 

Were you this heartless and cruel all along?

 

Was it all just a lie?

 

I don’t understand how you can treat someone you claimed to love in this manner.

 

Does that mean you never really loved me?

July 2, 2014July 1, 2014 by 25castleson25clouds Categories: knowing me better, New beginningTags: coping with break-ups 11 Comments

Slow progress

A few of you have asked about an update on my house, and as your wish is my command and all that Jazz…..

It’s been slow progress and for the last few months I have begun to think I will never move in. It has been very much the case of one step forward and about a million backwards. It doesn’t help that I feel like I have been filling cracks in the wall forever and it’s an old house so there are a lot of cracks! In fact I worry some of the walls are now more poly-filler than plaster!

However finally it feels like some small progress is being made….

With the sun being out (and the neighbours complaining about the length of my grass – although I did want to point out to them that I am currently putting back together a house. Grr!) I took advantage to make a start on what will be my veg garden. Or at least it was going to be until I read that tomatoes take so much nutrients out of the soil that you need to rotate their place in the garden now I’m not sure what I am going to do!

Well it was sunny so I took advantage!

 

I have also spent a lot of time getting to know my bathroom. My toilet is now officially in and I stuck to my guns and I did all of the tiling that was needed on the walls. It was a labour of love which began as great fun, but then slowly became a pain. I came very close to letting my dad do some but I wanted to do it all… and I did. I have to say the feeling of looking at the new tiles and realising I have put them up myself (albeit with the odd large gap, and a couple standing a little too proud for my liking) I feel fantastic and so proud – almost like I can achieve anything!

I haven’t done all of that – about 90%.. all round the window was me, up to the shower was me and so was an area on the right.

 

Of course after a few steps forward the big step backwards had to appear… and it did. This time it came in the form of a helpful but grumpy carpet fitter who came to measure me for my new carpets. Which now are going to be everywhere as the one carpet I was trying to rescue was, on closer inspection, covered in God alone knows and stunk to high hell no matter how much I cleaned it… so woo hoo new carpets everywhere.

Anyway, the carpet guy was in my bedroom where there is a very lovely, and very obvious, curve of the floor. This is most obvious when stood in the middle of the room, looking towards my window and the skirting board is straight while my floor is not. The plan was that Dad and I would layer thin bits of wood and carpet to a layer that made the floor smooth so there would be no steps or big obvious gaps. I decided to ask the helpful but grumpy carpet fitter if he thought this would work and he said “nope, looks like your beam has gone in the floor. Sorry to bring bad news but if it’s knackered anything you do will just be a short term fix.”

The result of this statement was that my father and I have spent this weekend pulling up the floor boards in my bedroom. Luckily all the boards look solid and so we have layered and put the now straight floor back down. But yet again this means that another weekend has passed with no obvious steps forward being made.

The best bit is that I now have a none movable deadline. I have a friend coming to stay at the start of July. He will need a bed to sleep on which means I need to have my carpets down. I do not want to drip paint on my new carpets which means my walls need painting due to the carpets being laid (however the wall paper will go up after so it doesn’t get torn when carpets are being laid – better be safe that sorry!) I also need to have a working cooker, which means I need to finish plastering the kitchen,  call back my electrician friend and I still have no bath or hand basin (although some lovely tiles) in my bathroom.

My friend arrives on the 7th July. That’s less than 5 weeks…it’s 32 days….I can’t work Thursday nights due to other commitments and their are a few social engagements (get me) which I shouldn’t break. Which means I am looking at the best possible situation of 26 days, but most of those are evenings after work – help!!!

June 4, 2014 by 25castleson25clouds Categories: New beginningTags: DIY, New house 4 Comments