Goodbye, goodbye.

Have you ever noticed that it’s the people on the periphery of your life that are the ones unlikely to cause you hurt? Nothing wholly unexpected, let’s face it, you can’t let everyone in, it’s impossible to keep everybody close. That said, are there ever any right people in your life to get hurt by? Perhaps the thing with emotions like being disappointed, letdown or being betrayed is that it’s always the people you love the most who’ll be behind any pain you experience.

Take relationships, if you’re unhappy to a point where you want to stray, you just end things, don’t you? If you feel like you have the desire or need to try something with someone new whether on an emotional or physical level, then by all means, have at it. When things end between two people, one will always experience more hurt than the other, that’s just life, but it’s better not to be living a lie rather than misleading or being misled by someone. No one wants to be a pity project, to be a boy or girl that someone stays with just because it’s convenient. Some of us will happily settle for being safe in a relationship but only if you’re both on the same page, it’s a wonderful thing to be someone’s everything.

Life happens though, things change and you can begin to question everything you thought you once knew. It’s easy to think that nobody should be trusted but that’s no way to spend your waking hours. Why shy shouldn’t you hate someone if they’ve done the worst thing to you that anyone can do to anyone else? Let someone think that they’re appreciated and loved and then show them unintentionally that it’s all fake? What do you do, how long does it take for you to catch someone in an untruth?

We play, we pretend.

The ping of a notification signals an incoming text message just as the moon turns blue. A phenomenon that happens once nearly every three years. The moon thing, not the texts, although the regularity would be about the same. The ghost of a girlfriend past, she’s probably drunk as per. ‘Can we meet?’ You have to marvel at the stones on her, you couldn’t mark her neck with a blowtorch. Two people in the world know how much she messed up previously but that number is only so low because one person wasn’t interested in a battle of ‘he said, she said’. It must feel pretty good on some level to invent a story that’ll satisfy you, to placate as many people as you can peddle bullshit to and pretend that it actually happened. Doesn’t there come a point where you don’t even care enough about someone to set the record straight? What annoys most is the fact that there was no anger or humiliation, betrayal was the order of the day, feelings crushed by a girl who was supposed to a be a best friend and someone to grow old with. She’s not the woman most people thought she was. Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, I fucking deserve it.

When the walls of denial are finally broken down and you get the other person to finally admit to themselves that we’ve been lied to, we can go one of two ways. Try and find some sort of messed up path in your mind that you’ll be able to justify their lying and get past the infidelity and/or emotional turmoil or realise that you’re worth more and that it’s better to cut ties altogether. Nobody needs to keep pulling on a particular thread, to continue with something that isn’t ever going to end well. Once the dust settles, you’ll know you were right to trust yourself.

So we catch up, curiousity often gets the better of us. In my experience, anything can be fixed she said. In my experience, she was full of shit. In the end, all that was offered that meant anything was a barely audible, ‘I’m sorry’. There’s so much that I should tell her about the way she made me feel but frankly, she deserves no more of my time. I was out of there faster than A-Train on Compound V, you can’t negotiate with a man who doesn’t need a particular person in their life, especially if it’s someone who messed you about. The more baffling thing is you now have someone who has the temerity to cheat on their current boyfriend. You think I didn’t know? I debated long and hard about turning around and saying something but I didn’t. It makes sense that if you waste a second of your life hoping that someone will suffer for what they did, then you’re allowing them to hurt you again. Fuck that feeling shit shit, there are millions of us that deserve better. Walking away, what should be an awful moment feels like anything but.

Kiss the way we were goodbye.

@TheSamMcLeod

One heart that was broke in two.

‘Love is like friendship set on fire.’

Perhaps one of the hardest relationship questions you’ll bounce around in your head is whether or not falling in love with your best friend is a good idea. Sure, there could be potential in it, but you just know that it could be an absolute shitshow too. What to do? If your feelings aren’t reciprocated, it’s going to ruin your friendship, isn’t it?

Maybe a lot of relationships begin as friendships and grow into something more meaningful that’ll impact you in a big way. Do you take that chance? You can never know initially but that shouldn’t stop you from imagining a future with someone who loves you. There’s nothing wrong with waking up next to your best friend.

All you want from that significant someone is for them to be there for you, the one shoulder you know you can lean on when you need to, to be your everything. Someone you can laugh with, somebody emotionally comfortable enough with you that they’re okay if you ever cry. Too much to ask?

Common sense tells you to never fall for your best friend, they’ll break you. It’s easy to think that it might not be that way for you but how can someone be so naive to think that they’re any different to anyone else? You have an intrinsic awareness though that once you change the way you look at a friend, you go all in or you stifle your feelings. It’s funny how things work sometimes, you can fall for someone without realising it and so when you finally do, it’s too late. You can’t just switch those feelings off.

Maybe some of us know immediately who it is we’ll end up with and that’s cool. If you don’t know, you have to take a leap of faith. Chances are though, one of you is going to fuck up and spoil every shared moment that’s gone before.

Maybe you shouldn’t have gone there that night.

You don’t need to like someone from the first second you see them, but a friendship can start and progress from there. In the beginning of whatever this was, there was a lot of laughter and smiles. Until there wasn’t.

Cheating, infidelity, call it what you want but it’s a game changer. Is it worse to emotionally cheat on somebody? Calling, emailing, texting someone you shouldn’t be, that counts too, doesn’t it? You don’t accidentally bump into someone in a hotel and decide that you’re going to spend the night, a lot of work has gone into that arrangement. There are millions of people in the world who make good decisions every day, someone chose not to. Let’s face it, you can’t choose to be monogamous whenever you feel like it. None of us can ever ask for 101% from someone but 99% isn’t enough. Is there anything worse than betrayal, than being deceived by someone who you thought was everything? When you lie to someone, aren’t you also lying to yourself?

Maybe some positivity can come from bad things though, you end up appreciating the more humble part of yourself. You might not need it but a gentle reminder sometimes of how to treat people can never be a bad thing. You can take whatever you want from any experience, getting rid of toxicity is good, and whilst there’s bound to be a bit of heartbreak, don’t we all know we’re better off alone than staying with someone who is quite happy to knowingly hurt you?

Sometimes the hardest part of loving someone is that moment when the penny drops that the best thing you can do for them, far less yourself, is to let them go. It’s a shame when someone fucks up but better to know as early as possible what their character is really like. It’s okay to choose poorly on occasion, hopefully it makes you a bit cleverer the next time you’re in the position of picking someone that you want to get close to.

Spin it to your family, friends or on social media in any way that you want, only one of us ruined something built up for years for a relationship that lasted for hours. Turns out that best friends can become strangers a lot quicker than strangers can become friends.

Maybe you should have told a little less lies, maybe you shouldn’t have gone and ruined my life for one night.

@TheSamMcLeod

You wet my eyes.

That initial feeling you have when you meet someone new, you expect or hope for fireworks. The feelings that you get when they do something that gives you goosebumps, the things that makes you smile. The gentle tug of your sleeve followed by said smile and a wink when they want you to look at something that they’ve seen, a wink that could melt a snowman’s socks. That person who could rearrange your soul with just one look, someone who fits with you like a plug in a socket. The type of sound they make when they laugh. Their laugh clearly belongs to them and you know immediately that you love it.The way that they play with their hair. It’s new, but it’s exciting and scary all at the same time.

Isn’t life for all of us a roll of the dice? You take a chance on someone because it might be the best thing to ever happen to you. Sure, you could get hurt, but you gamble, don’t you? Science will tell you that it takes a third of a second to fall for someone. If it goes wrong though, shouldn’t you be grateful that the wounds you have, you survived long enough to be able to lick?

A random Thursday is spent late night shopping with one of his best friends. A girl waves at them from across the street and whilst he doesn’t recognise her, his friend does. They cross over, they’re introduced, and she seems perfectly lovely. The two of them chat away as old friends do, and their accidental meeting ends with an invite to a party a couple of days later. His friend is into the girl, and begs him to come along. A plan is agreed, even if it’s shit, it’ll only be a couple of hours, no harm in meeting new people and helping out a friend. You want to impress everyone so he dresses accordingly.

It’s a nice night, a lot of people are in the back garden listening to music and enjoying themselves. It’s cool, a lot better than he thought it would be. He knows nearly nobody there but it’s okay. More than one girl takes his eye, but he also knows that’s not the best thing to be thinking about when he’s trying to be a good wingman for his friend. The night gets longer, the drinks flow and the conversations continue. One girl kept glancing at him but she wasn’t doing anything about it. They get to chatting as the evening passes, and he doesn’t have to give anything to her but his attention, something he was willing to do. When she stroked his neck, he finally dared to believe that it was going to happen. They kissed more than once, it was almost perfect.

The night ends and he goes home alone, but numbers are exchanged.

Circumstances alter when he finds out that she was already with someone when she kissed him, so they lose touch. It’s not something he wanted to do but it’s his decision and he’s okay with it. Eventually.

Weeks later, his phone rings at 2am and it’s her asking to see him. She’s nearby, can they talk? It’s nice to be nice, and no man should ever want a lady to be out on her own that late at night, so he acquiesces and apologies are made from her immediately for what went before. One of his rules is that as long as you say sorry for something you’ve done, no grudges are kept, everything is okay again. Forgiving can be forgetting. Trying to understand her was a bit like pointing a microphone towards the stage at a gig, and hoping to hear someone whisper, but he was willing to give it a go.

She’s single now and things progress between them as the weeks and months continue. His rental property agreement is coming to an end and whilst he’s thinking of moving in with a friend, they decide to get a place together. It’s great, they move in all of their individual stuff and both decorate together. Fabulous nights follow. He has a photograph of her on his bedside table and she has one of him on her one. Random thoughts became an actual reality. Discarded tubes of toothpaste, plates left in the sink and underwear left on the bathroom floor were things that he never expected, but it was okay because it was her. She tells him every day that she loves him but he doesn’t need to hear it if he has her word that she does. Once is always enough, just another rule.

A day comes and he can’t find his keys. They’re not on his side of the bed, so he checks her side, just in case they’ve fallen down there. A letter is found and it’s open and it’s from the guy that she was with when they first kissed. He shouldn’t read, but can’t help it. It’s pretty explicit and it’s clear that he’s visited their house more than once when he was away for work. His heart forgets to be a heart for a second. It’s been broken before but not like this.

If you go looking for something, then you might well find it. It hurts all the more when you find something that you didn’t want to, and you sure as shit, didn’t expect. It’s something, a whole lot of somethings. The problem with growing older with someone is that you realise that you’re into something bigger than yourself, so you have a responsibility to another.

She comes home but he doesn’t say anything, just gives a hug and says hey. Are the cruellest lies told in silence? Pretty quickly after, he watches as she texts someone that isn’t him. Clearly, sometimes pain is the driver and it doesn’t have brakes. There was so much she could have said but she chose not to.

He thinks she still loves him, but can’t try and escape the fact that he’s not enough for her. He’s not blaming her for falling back in love with an ex. There’s no anger either, just a lot of pain. He thought he could imagine how much this would hurt, but he was wrong.

It’s important for them to talk. She doesn’t know entirely why yet, but she’s about to find out. She knows there’s something that he’s not telling her. He knows it’s time to do something that he doesn’t want to do but he has to. There’s a look in her eye, maybe it’s regret. Who fucking cares any more. He holds her and looks directly in her eyes so she knows that he sees her. The conversation happens, they’re oil and water now and she knows it.

He leaves and now he’s not looking at her any more. He doesn’t turn around because he can’t, no point in looking back. He calls a girl who has been messaging him for weeks and who is clearly interested. He convinced himself that it wasn’t cool though, so he stopped after that initial call. Why? Not because he was thinking of finding someone new, but he didn’t want to be like her. No longer trusting someone is saddening if you still love them.

I only called her one time.

@TheSamMcLeod