What is Going on With David?

The post bellow is the one i linked to from Facebook and Twitter. You may wish to read that first.

I said I might do two blog posts tonight. Well this is the second and much more personal one. I've never posted personal stuff either on this blog or on Facebook/Twitter, I'm much too private a person for that but right at the moment I just want to get stuff out and this might be a good way to do it.

At times like these I wish I was as good a writer as my old friend Duncan. His blog when he was going through some bad times was moving, thought provoking and, dare I say it, almost beautiful. Mine has a chance of degenerating into a rant. I'll try to not let it come to that. In fact if it does I won't post it, I'll re-write it and you'll never know. This could have gone through fifteen draughts and you'd never be any the wiser.

To the person this is mostly about: You probably won't ever read this but if you do I hope you understand it. There is some stuff in here I wish I could have said to you in real life. Some of it I couldn't because I got too tongue-tied  when I was around you. Some of it I couldn't because we never gave each other the chance. I wish I could have seen you one last time.


Anyway to get to the point, some of you may have been asking yourselves "What has been going on with David over the last year or so?" (Yeah I know none of you have really but it was a good "in".) As almost all of you know I broke up with Emma  around a year and a half ago after 13 years together including 3 years of marriage. It was hard and I went through some pretty dark times but I  came through it (or perhaps more accurately I'm still coming through it) and I got some help from some people I really didn't expect. Some friends who cared a lot more that I ever thought they would. I've thanked some of you in the past but I'd like to thank you again now. I won't name any of you but you all know who you are. Some of you listened, some of you cheered me up, some of you kept my mind off things. Despite the fact that you all have your own problems and issues you all came to my aid when I needed you. I only hope I can do the same for you some day.

As the months went on and I started to come round I started meeting other girls. All of whom were nice enough but not quite, you know, there just wasn't anything there. Then last November I met a girl on the internet who took me absolutely by surprise. She was perfect for me in every way. A bit young perhaps but she acted older than her age. Into almost everything I am - sci-fi, movies, quality TV drama, reading, travelling. She wasn't just interested in history, she was an archaeologist for Christ's sake, absolutely beautiful, fun, funny and American. Actually scratch that, Californian. She doesn't like shopping, she likes cars and sport (not my thing but you're getting the theme here yeah?) Unfortunately when I met her she was back in California but oddly enough this seemed to work. I never thought you could fall for someone 6000 miles away by mainly reading stuff they've typed but you can and I did. Probably much too fast and much too hard. I started to let myself dream about a future involving trips to America, visiting amazing places with someone who knew all about them, visiting other places that neither of us knew but were both excited about. I used to look forward to seeing the little symbol on my phone that told me she'd sent me a message. It made me stupidly happy knowing that there was someone, a girl so perfect who wanted, who chose to talk to me from 6000 miles away.

After Christmas she came back to England and to be honest from that moment on it became harder. Just trying to get and keep her attention became hard work but when we did meet it was great, she was as amazing in real life as she had been on the internet and on the phone. But as time went on it became harder and harder. She became more distant with every passing week until, a couple of weeks ago it came to a bizarre and unpredictable conclusion.

Now I know that I'm just talking about the death of a relationship (and I use that word in its broadest sense) here. Something we've all been through before and I'm not trying to say this is special or trying to be all "woe is me" about it. I'm just getting it out because there have been times where I have wanted to shout and scream this story but that isn't socially acceptable. Blogging is. You can choose not to read it.

It was her birthday a few weeks ago. I took her out and we had a really nice day together. A few days later she went off on holiday. When she got back we arranged to meet up but both mentioned that wee needed to talk. I (stupidly, with hindsight) mentioned that there was now an elephant in the room and the reply I got back was the most unexpected thing I have ever seen in a text message. She told me she had had two marriage proposals and she couldn't decide which one to accept. I won't go into the details of the conversation we had after that but you can imagine there was a lot of shock and upset from my side. When asked if love came into any of this the blunt answer was no. There was more to it than that but I really can't be bothered to go into her justification about friendship and shared interests.

I know I'm biased, I'm bitter and I'm jealous but honestly the hardest thing about this is seeing someone I care about making such a dreadful life decision. I'm not saying she would be better off with me, she might not have been. It might never have worked out but we never got a chance to find out because of this. I really hope she ends up happy, I really do but I can't help but fear the worst.

So there you go. That's my story. If you've been wondering why I've been a bit all over the place emotionally and maybe Tweeting some weird stuff now and then this is it. I know that in the scheme of things it isn't special but you know what? Writing it down has helped. It has made me feel a bit better about it.