Life, it appears, is never straightforward. Well, maybe not life, but certainly love. After some pretty immature messages from Lauren, I was at breaking point with The Mechanic. She wasn’t an issue, but she became one. I can’t be doing with extra shite from her. He and I argued on the phone after her message.
I told him weeks ago that he needed to be firmer with her, that he needed to grow some balls and tell her where to stick it. All these texts, these poorly punctuated Facebook messages. All these “hey hun”s and “let me no if we can meet 4 drnks dnt just ignre this msg, wb please xx”s. The constantly bubbly, look-we-are-such-good-friends messages. With him rolling his eyes with every contact from her, or tutting and throwing his phone onto the duvet after yet another text… It got exhausting.
Forgive me for my Nikki Graham impression, but just who does this girl think she is? Who IS she?
Early on in my relationship with The Mechanic, I left a jokey message on his wall. It read: “You made me pay for lunch, you tight bastard x” and referred to a lunch date we had where The Mechanic had opened his wallet to find it void of card so I had paid. The next day (in the early hours of the morning), Lauren popped up, having to comment on it. She might as well have taken a piss on his head to mark territory.
So, that is how it all started with her. I’ve had her constantly reasserting herself is a key female in his life for months. Naturally, I don’t take kindly to it, but as an adult and not worried in the slightest that he will go back to her (such trust is new for me but welcome), I overlook her silly little remarks and her attempts to undermine the foundations of our relationship.
The reason it got to where it has (with the message posted before) is that I finally lost my temper with the pair of them. The Mechanic says that he is too soft to just tell her to leave him alone. He’s “too nice”. I told him that if he was firm with her, she’d stop with the ridiculous harrassment.
Did he pay any attention?
Did he my arse.
In the end, after yet another pathetic pleady message to meet up “for a drink and a catch up” (you’d've thought that with a zillion previously ignored messages under her belt, she’d get the hint), I replied. First up, it was wrong of me to do so, and so I accept that “I started it” with regard to the direct contact between her and I. I replied from his phone saying that The Mechanic had already explained to her that he would get her the money as soon as he was able, which wasn’t at the moment and that as he had had to wait over 6 months for her to pay him back, and the only reason he got that money was by buying her car (that she calls Polly which irritated me too) off her, thus incurring a debt of £100 from him to her now, she could surely wait a little longer.
Then came back a message about how she had been very patient already (er, a month!!!) and needed the money and that it was none of my business (strictly true), with some hoity toity ending about facts… whatever. So, let it lie.
Then her ridiculous message and my incredibly annoyed response.
This has been followed with another load of shit from her (punctuation, spelling and grammar seem to be in short supply in the West country) about how much her parents did for him in taking him to Florida, how she took him to Cyprus twice, and how he begged her to stay friends with him, and how he “tried to kiss” her at Christmas. The depths that this girl will go to to try and stoke a row is impressive, but she’s not very good at it. I have seen her messages to him on FB in his inbox, week after week begging him to call her because she was finding uni hard, begging him to be friends, blah blah. There was no Christmas kiss. He paid her parents for Florida and he was pretty impressed by the Cyprus one… he’s only ever been there once! This isn’t even the half of it.
I simply tired of his unwillingness to just tell her to go jump.
So, there we were on the phone, me on my bed with the rats, and him halfway up the A303. And we called it off. It was sad, desperately sad. We aren’t a good match for anything longterm, but to let him go is very hard. Bear in mind that I stayed in a bad relationship with Beardy for a long time because I loved him. With The Mechanic, there’s no real future, but he’s kind and has never betrayed me or hurt me.
To use another blogger’s words in an email to me recently about her own situation, I have been “less than nice” to The Mechanic of late. I can be a very, very difficult woman to be with. I can be spiteful and insensitive. When I come out of a phase like that, I always feel terrible remorse and cry a lot about how cold and heartless I can be, but it doesn’t take it back. The poor Mechanic has had his work cut out.
And we agree on the phone that it isn’t working.
But two hours later he was at mine and we were being distant to one another. We can’t be together and be warm, yet we can’t seem to manage to be apart. He touches my arm, a small display of affection, and my skin bristles and I shrug him off. It makes his heart weep inside, but I can’t stop myself.
Sunday’s run comes around and I leave him sitting in my room. On returning, he picks me up from the station and I then crash out on my bed, while he watches television. Later that evening, we manage to argue. The topic of “us” comes up and he says a few things I don’t want to hear. Tight-lipped, we agree it’s done with and both drop off to sleep crying silent tears. I can’t speak for him, but I am a mixture of conflicting emotions. At 3.30am, the alarm goes off as he has to leave to go to work. We are both shattered, swollen faced. We agree that all was said last night. More upset that it won’t work.
And then he leaves. I’m sat in my silent bedroom and hear the front door shut. I can either stay here or chase after him. Do I want to be with him? Will he ever stop irritating me? I don’t know, but I can’t let him leave. Not like that.
In my dressing gown only, no shoes, nothing else, I race out to the car and we talk in the rain. It’s pissing it down. It’s kind of like one of those Hollywood movies, except not. It’s wet and cold and not really that romantic, just two unhappy people who are feeling lost and fucked up, standing in English drizzle at 4am while the street lights flicker and ping off one at a time.
A lot has been said recently, hurtful things on both sides. More importantly, I have been cold and uncaring. I hate myself for how I can be sometimes. I just can’t seem to control the need to lash out by cutting out people who care about me. We’re going to lose one another for good.
***********************************************
Admitting that there may be nowhere to go was probably what made it possible for us to return back inside. The Mechanic texted to let work know that he had had food poisoning all night and wouldn’t make it in and we walked back to my house. Deciding that there doesn’t have to be a future made “us” a possibility once more. Just because it might never really go anywhere, doesn’t mean that we can’t enjoy the here and now. We will argue again. He will annoy me. I will snap at him. I will do whatever it is I do that pisses him off. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t want to see each other anymore.
It’s so fucked up that I can’t put it into words. All we both know is that we do want each other more than we want to be without each other. We spent today just having a good time together, like we used to, laughing, watching films, talking. If you take out the pressure, it comes good again.
We’ve agreed that “it’s complicated” and that is that. Nothing more, nothing less.
!).
