The 90's

It was 1990 - and at 19 she had no experience whatsoever of dating - I think in her mind it was just a simple case of seeing what was out there - no boundaries to write home about and no real inkling of what she was looking for. It was as though this guy had chosen her more than the other way around - he also said the same thing some years later, realizing that for her the 'man in her life' could have been just about anyone.

Just days after starting university, wreckless and with no real idea of what she was even doing away from home, she started to frequent the student's union. In those days she could get entry into the club, have drinks, and get a cab ride home - all for 5 British Pounds - talk about a cheap date! There was one guy there in her first week that had played a prank on her - pretended that he was one of the tutors at the uni and used that as a pick-up line - she was a green as they come and fell for it hook, line and sinker. She was living in a house with 3 other girls on the top of a really steep hill. There was a roundabout at the bottom of the hill, and the student's union just off to the right of that. At the other end, you would be veering up towards the airport. Not the prettiest place in the world and the house that she lived in wasn't all that either, and worse still the landlady lived just a few doors down.

She met the guy 3 weeks in - nothing special really - she had noticed him behind the bar - the barman - she had remembered his eyes - even now she can recall that there was a darkness to them - pupils dilated to the max, strawberry blond hair and a thick Irish accent. I think in hindsight there must have been some past life issues here that needed to be cleaned up for them both. Anyways that Monday evening was the Student's Night at one of the local nightclubs - so she had gone there with a group of girls - one girl in particular that she had met who was from Liverpool and another from Middlesbrough - even meeting all these new people with their thick Northern accents was new to her - the only thing that she'd ever experienced close to that was watching Emmerdale - not that she was ever into that show :) So yes, back to the Monday night at the club - she was dancing to 'Groove Is In The Heart' - bopping away she noticed that the guy from behind the student's union bar was there watching her - sipping his beer and watching her dancing - when she stepped away from the dance floor, he came over and started to chat to her - asking her if she was single or not - and she said that she was single - and that was that - there were of course no cell phones back in those days - but they had decided that she would meet him the next day after his shift behind the bar.

It was all so new to her - so exciting to be away from all those restrictions at home with her parents - to be free to do what she wanted to do. So day by day, and little by little, she began to see him more and more - never really sure about him - it never occurred to her to perhaps bide her time and see what else was out there - or in actual fact to concentrate on school instead. She would go home every weekend to be with her family - and slowly as the relationship deepened, he wanted her to stay there with him at the weekends too - so she gave that weekly visit home up too - just so that he knew she didn't have someone else at home. Silly really. Silly how much she gave up just to make things right for him - never having a thought for herself and what was right for her - but then she had never been encouraged to have a thought for her own desires, needs and wants - she had always taken care of everyone else so it was second nature for her. She didn't think twice.

Her relationship with her Dad and Brother began to change too - her Dad stopped talking to her as much - and the distance between them just started to grow - and her Brother started to block her out - out of his life and out of his heart - perhaps if this combination of events had not happened - and perhaps if she was actually able to tell her family about this guy, they would have advised her from the get go that he was not the right type of guy for her. You see it was already quite clear that he liked to drink and with the drink came gambling - he would be gone all day sometimes - in the bar - in a lot of bars about town - and then he would roll home in the late hours not knowing where he had been or what he had done - she put up with it. Clearly a red flag, but she knew nothing more than just to put up with it. And this went on day after day, week after week, month after month - until she was so deeply engrossed in the grips of this nightmare - stuck in a web - and not seeing a way out - not realizing her own self-worth, she shunned other advances from more suitable young men and stuck by this drunk.

On top of that - they had both begun to think that this was love - oh how naiive!! Love! It seems so ridiculous now - but they had both begun to tell themselves a story - this is what love looked like. In time she got the 'If you can't beat them, join them attitude' - that first summer apart from him was hell for her - 4 months apart and she counted every day down as if her life depended on him and what they had together. She wrote him letters and thought about him every waking second of every single day - she never heard from him once in all that time - not a phone call - not a letter - anyone else would have put a lid on the whole thing by now - and especially by the end of that summer - but no, she just carried on believing that he was the one she was meant to be with. She couldn't wait to get back to University - and even went back a few weeks earlier so that she could help out with him in the Student's Accommodation department - they got paid of course and it meant that she was able to be with him again. Something inside of her had broken though, the fact that he had made no attempt to contact her for all that time had devastated her - she thought she had meant more to him than that. But then when she found out that he was now smoking pot, it all started to make sense - it had become his life, listening to music from the 60's and 70's - sitting in his friend's room while he played the guitar and ate cold baked beans from the tin, it became clear to her why she had fallen of his radar.

Things were never really right with them both after that - as I said, she joined them too - there was nothing else to do - or at least it seemed that way to her - the whole of her world was now consumed in this crazy lifestyle - awake until the small hours of the morning - hunting for food in the cupboards - living in a house that she would not have been caught dead in when she was safe at home with her family, she completely lost herself - and I mean completely. Having never dealt with events from her childhood, and what was now happening at home with her family, the guilt she felt for leaving them, she began to get into a tripped out state so that it blocked out all her feeling and emotions and kept her in a cloud - in a fuzz.  And of course the early 90's brought about a whole new era in recreational drug use with house music and raves - it was everywhere you turned - it was now the norm - it was a new culture - with the music, came the drugs and with the drugs came the clothing, and with the clothing came the clubs and the rides down to London at weekends - and if not London then it was right there at the bottom of that hill. Raves in the middle of fields in the middle of the night - hundreds and hundreds of cars driven by kids who would find out where the rave was going to be at, and drive out in the middle of muddy fields to barns in order to dance the night away. The mid-90's just came and went in a spin.

It hadn't escaped her notice that her relationship was no longer working, or functional, or happy. The two of them had simply started to co-exist as they did not know any better - and she wasn't even sure whether she liked him anymore - in fact she knew she didn't. They would argue endlessly - but she was now living in his house - under his roof - there had now been years of this torment - and year by year it had ground her down to the point that she was just a shell - beautiful on the outside - but numb on the inside. Every day he would tell her how boring she was - how worthless she was - it had been years since he had taken her out for a drink or for dinner - she had begun to believe him too - I think anyone would if you hear the same thing over and over. And her life had become one of going to work, coming home and self-medicating with the smoke - she was in the darkest place in her life so far - and she was now only going home once a month. Her Brother had his own life now and didn't let her in at all - her Dad said nothing, they shared no more than twenty words when she was at home - he had shut her out - and all she did while she was home was count the hours until she could leave again - and leaving mean driving the 90 miles down the road to the other hell that she had created for herself. It wasn't long before she wanted to be gone forever - gone from the world - there were days when she would be in the car driving home from work where she would scream to God that she wanted it all to be over - and the truth is is that she meant it every time she said it. She didn't want to live anymore - consumed now in guilt and in so much pain that she could hardly bare it, she wished her life would end.


Some 9 years after they met - and after a drunken night and smashed windows - she sat in the spare room of the house that they shared rocking back and forth on the bed. With her head in her hands she realized that she had been on the verge of doing something that would have been tragic. Her cell phone rang and her friend asked her what was up - he could hear that something awful had just happened and intuitively knew that all was not well. She knew when she clicked the phone off to that call that her relationship with this barman was over - truly over - she would never look at him the same way again - talk to him the same way again - it was done - she had almost crossed a line - she was driven to almost cross that line - she began to understand what mental abuse led people to do, and she knew that it was over. He left a few weeks later - back to his home in Ireland - she stayed living in the house for a little while longer. Before she left her University town for good, he did come back once more - not able at that time to tell her that he was sorry for what he had done; it was clear to him now too that she was never coming back to him ever. She moved back to her family - and it wasn't long before she left again for a few months - this time to Australia - this time to Byron Bay - this time to meet the Slovenian.