Thursday 23 July 2015

The Birthday came and went.......

It’s been a funny old time since the last post.
Since my last post a lot has happened, 22 kept in touch, he was due to come out for a drink for my birthday the weekend before last, he text me during the evening on the Saturday, said he would come into town, we saw him from a distance but Evil Twin threw a strop with a ‘he’s 22 for gods sake’ (she has been seeing two 32 year olds and she’s 42 btw, yes there is 15 between me and 22 but....) she threw a strop about going up to the club (where they were and the only place open after 1) so we went home, in a taxi, in silence.
I got a message from him at 3:30 that morning but didn’t answer it when I received it that Sunday morning (there was nothing really to answer)
Sunday came with no more messages but as I’d not replied I’d not necessarily expected one, had another rubbish evening out, including an Indian and DVD with Uniform and Evil Twin (who I’m a little annoyed with still)
Monday (Birthday) arrives and I have lunch and shopping planned with ET and her daughter and dinner with another friend, I wake up to friend’s voicemail saying she can’t go out for dinner because she’s ill and has been for four days (she never bothered to warn me) at about 11 I get a text from ET, telling me that the accident that shut the road yesterday involved 22.
I was frozen, I responded asking if he was ok, for an hour and a half I wondered if he was dead or alive, I then sent another message asking, to which she replied ‘sorry we were getting ready’ REALLY?! They were an hour late to pick me up (I hate late with a passion) and by the time they arrived I was just about ready to not go and spend my birthday sulking at home alone.
When I got in the car she said that he’d had to be cut out (her ex is a retained fireman) and that she thought he had a broken tib and fib and pelvic damage, she went through all of the ‘he was probably drinking’ etc and appeared to have no regard for how I would be feeling. I got through the day but felt pretty awful.
I blamed myself that I’d not gone to the club, that I’d not replied and many other things, I looked up the news that night and there was an article about the accident, if I’d not already heard it I’ve have known straight away from the car, it said that he’d been taken to the big hospital 40 miles away and was serious, I called ET who didn’t seem concerned by the panic in my voice and told me not to worry (REALLY?!)
I spoke to another friend who said she would call the hospital at 9 the next morning, the next morning I was back at work and in meetings, I waited for the call, then got a message to say she’d overslept (my friends aren’t looking great here are they?!) She eventually called around 2 to tell me that he was in Intensive Care following surgery and was stable, I felt better but to be honest I was still completely out of my mind with worry.
I sent his sister a message (we’ve barely spoken since the incident of pouring a drink over her blokes head) but she appeared grateful of my offer of support (she obviously knows no detail here, or at least I hope she doesn’t) we exchanged a few messages over the coming days, she told me he was in a bad way but stable and making slow improvements, I felt happier but was desperate to know he was ok and to hear from him
We exchanged a few messages that week about how he was doing and how she and the kids were but I was very upset when she said he needed another operation but that his body was too swollen and his sats were too low.
I thought about going to the hospital, sending cakes, sending a card, all of the options I could think of, I also thought about bumping into his parents, his sister and all of the questions that would be asked if I did.
I also tortured myself over the conversations that we had had over the past few months, when he’d told me what car he was getting and I’d warned him that it would be too much for him and offered to give him lessons in driving it properly, or when I’d spoken to him the previous week about drink driving and how stupid it was, or why I’d kept saying no when he asked to come over and about a million other things, I’d tried to call his phone but it went straight to voicemail
I felt totally muddled, my brain wasn’t working properly, I went and brought a card (well two actually) with the plan of taking it to his sisters the following week.
I was going to Brands Hatch for Superbikes on the Saturday and decided that I was going to try and take my mind off of it, at least for a day, my friend was racing at 9:40 so I had to be there early but spent most of the journey down there worry and over thinking, I got there and it was lovely, they are lovely people that should really be prescribed on the NHS.
22 was still very close to my thoughts and at 9:39 just as we walked out to watch the first race my phone pinged, I picked it up and a very familiar name appeared, I think I looked at it about four times prior to opening it and I’m pretty sure that a couple of tears of relief sprang to my eyes.
The message was the same as the one that I’d got a lot over the past few months ‘you ok x’ is what it said, I replied asking if he was shitting me, we had a conversation where he told me he was ok, I still don’t know how the accident happened and I’m not sure I really care to be honest but I do know that he has two broken feet, broken legs, broken ribs and a broken nose, so all in all you could say he’s a bit broken!
I had a great day that day, the whole world looked brighter and the bike friends are amazing, a great cheer up mechanism.
When I walked into work on the Monday one of the girls in the office said how nice it was to see me happy again and to be honest I really felt it. Monday got better as the disciplinary I’d been asked to support was for the hottest guy that works for us, that sadly doesn’t come into the office anywhere near enough, so I got to spend an hour with him and I guarantee that there was no way in the world that they were sacking him!
22 and I had continued to speak a bit on the Sunday and the Monday brought the normal ‘hows work x’ message to which I responded. We talked a bit during the day while I was at work and into the evening. I asked if he wanted me to go over and cheer him up, it took a lot for me to ask that if I’m honest he replied saying no, it’s ok, I can’t pretend that it didn’t hit me like a smack in the face because the truth is it did, I’d wanted nothing more from the moment I’d heard about the accident but to go and see him. I replied in the vein of how he normally responds to me and said Charming, don’t say I never offered, to which he replied that he has too many visitors.
And that is where we are now, it’s now Thursday, I’ve not responded. I want to but I can’t, I’m hurt, I need some time to lick my wounds, I don’t know what to say, there was nothing to respond to really in that message, I guess I feel like I need to take a step back from it, I do feel like I need to protect myself, mainly from my own feelings, I’m feeling things that I never expected to, I’ve always had my sensible head on with this one, how did anything else creep in there and ruin that?
I don’t think I’ve ever felt so lacking in support from my friends, had it been ET in my position I guarantee that I’d have gone to the club that night, I’ve never judged her even when I thought she was in the wrong and I’d have been checking that she was ok, I guess we have to accept that not everyone is like us or behaves like us, I pride myself in being thoughtful but it seems not everyone is prepared to go the extra mile.
My head is a messy place right now, someone at work yesterday asked me the name of the four year old (Baggage Boy’s son) and would you believe it my mind was totally blank, I had it again today (several times actually) I had the attendee’s at a meeting and when I typed it up the initials of one person I couldn’t place at all (they are also 22’s initials that pop up on the screen of my phone) it was however someone that I deal with very regularly and wouldn’t normally forget. I don’t know how to pull my head out of this deep, dark place.
I guess on a positive note there is no chance that I will see 22 for months as his recovery will be long, if he had been drinking he’ll also lose his licence which means the months may become years, I still keep looking at my phone and wanting his name to pop up, it isn’t currently but I guess when he has too many visitors he won’t be worrying about me.
Things on my mind currently are why for the past four months has he text me most days, asked to come to see me more times than I could count (it’s obviously not just about getting his leg over as we did that over three months ago!) but he doesn’t want to see me when I am frankly desperate to see him (he probably doesn’t realise I’m desperate to see him thankfully)
Well, that’s my woes out onto the page, maybe writing down how I feel will make my head stop playing these games with me, I wonder if it’s like a computer when you have too many applications open? The computer just freezes for a little while to let itself catch up?

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