a blast from the past

Im absolutely knackered today, it seems I didn’t sleep too well. All tossing and turning, a combination of wrestling with my covers, heat and my mind and my heart racing.

I received a few hand written letters yesterday, one form an old friend who is still at home, and she just wanted to say hi, on a very lovely postcard…

The other one form a long time ago ex boyfriend

Now I speak to him on occasions – when I have topped up my phone enough to listen to him chat rubbish and also for long, lingering, enjoyable (the kind you can have after knowing someone 12ish years) but very expensive silences. His letter was 2 pages of random waffling, doodles and bizarre bits and pieces, and a series of 15 photos, equally as odd- ranging from pictures of blurry tents in the dark and  pink sky to pictures of his housemates (who I have never met) playing Play station 3.

The thing is I was really looking forward to getting his letter, which I knew was coming after he asked me for my address….

I was checking my postbox daily – and yesterday there it was, a grey plastic bag taped down and my address scrawled on the front. It made me smile.

For the first time in a few weeks I got a nervous giggly excitement. I liked getting the random package of nonsense.

But then I lay awake in bed, most of the night, wishing I was 15 again with no responsibility…. There are about 5 people in my life who have influenced me and have helped to mould my brain… one is my best female friend, one is here in Singapore and is new to this crazy life of mine- he is big buttons- one is Mr. D- one is an un-namable accountant and one is the letter writing Ex.

This particular ‘letter writing ex’ of mine has always been a bit of an escape from me,  I remember starting at 6^th form (school) back in september 2000 and really hating it, and sneeking out in the morning or just after lunch to his house and getting back in bed and hiding with him from the world. He has provided me with some of the funniest stories of my life- chaos if you will: also he was and still is the keeper of the most intensely devastating secrets of mine, and the one person in my life who I know has also forgotten them, and will never hold them against me!!

One such example of this chaos was when I was around 18 years old and was going through a rather intense drugs experimentation phase... He had this massive old house in the middle of town, and I was at the time smoking a spliff on the most giant mahogany chair in his living room- so there I was on an 6 foot in the air on the seat of a massive chair that was actually installed in the living room via the window, with a crane… when suddenly my ex (who was my fella at the time) burst in the room drinking petrol and having a wild time with 3 friends. We then all proceeded to move to the giant bathroom where a giant pond liner was installed with plumbing for a giant Jacuzzi. By the end of the night, there were 15 of us in this pond in the bathroom getting caned out of our heads. With a floating ashtray and more alcohol than I have ever seen since. My two friends prudently perched on the edge of the ‘hot tub pond liner’ in t-shirts the boys had lent to them and reluctantly joining in. I was having the time of my life.

Another time I spent with him involved a game of strip poker and running across a busy street naked to win my clothes back.

The first time my mum met him, she said “Is he on drugs? If he’s not, he should be!”

I used to escape to his house all the time, which probably explains how I ended up not being a doctor or a lawyer or hugely successful.

Everything in his house was massive: the chair in the front room, the bathroom, the house, the Pond Liner, the Kitchen hob was HUGE, even his presence was massive… and so was his bed. He had the biggest bed I have ever seen, a giant four poster – yes- bunk bed. 2 stacked on top of each other… You could actually stand in the space between the bottom and the top bunk… It was quite the party house.

I used to love hanging out there.

Then he moved house, to his own more sensible house… we still got high and drunk and chatted rubbish for hours and hours just without the interruptions of housemates spitting petrol bombs or demanding poker parties/drugs/chaos… In fact, we hung out a lot. Fell in and out of love and eventually went our separate ways after growing up together.

I met him on my 14^th birthday and he left on my 22^nd.

I visited him twice at his new home ‘down south’… he remains single to this day and still hankers after his old life. We were never the same though: I remember sitting on the stairs in his house one time I went to visit- I was in a serious and committed relationship at the time and didn’t think of him as anything other than a friend. He still managed to rip me to pieces whilst I sat there on the stairs of his parents house. I don’t think he actually knew what he did, but it hurt. Badly.

I left his house, never to return.