After that, I obviously could have broken down. I very much wanted to lash out, and on more occasions than I should have, I cried myself to sleep. In the end, I think my only saving grace was that my heart had been broken before. I had been through all of this before—maybe not in quite the same way—but I had had the experience of living with the bereavement of a broken heart. However, this time I was ten years older and so much more prepared for the overwhelming feelings that came with a broken heart.
In the back of my mind, I repeated two things to myself, over and over again. Number one was that ‘time is the best healer in the world,’ and number two was that ‘a breakup is a bit like ripping off a very painful plaster / Band-Aid; it’s best to just rip it straight off.’ With those two pieces of information in the forefront of my mind, I vowed to try and enjoy that initial breakup period and throw myself into whatever life had in store for me, rather than focusing on lashing out and moping around. I never intended to live in Sydney forever and really didn’t want to leave on such a bad note. I knew I was the only person that could change the path my life was about to take.
I didn’t have many friends in Sydney at the time. Being a slave for Guy had been a full time job, so there hadn’t really been much time for making friends. Luckily, I did have one very good friend with whom I had worked. She was single, had a spare room and already had two cats; it was a match made in heaven! As soon as she heard about the breakup, she came over, sat with me for hours, listened to my heartache, offered me her spare room and truly was an amazing friend to me. She had actually broken up with her boyfriend of ten years six months earlier, so she knew exactly what I was going through. Once she had offered me her spare room, the decision to move out was a lot easier. I had somewhere for both Coco and I to go, and all of a sudden, I didn’t feel so alone. Moving out was easy. Guy wasn’t around, so I took the important things, like his entire alcohol cupboard, his flat screen TV and our bed. My new flatmate, Elly, and I very much enjoyed toasting our single life with the vintage Moet Guy’s sisters had bought him for his thirtieth birthday.
If anyone out there is going through a break up or a hard time, I think friendship truly is the magic ingredient for a quick recovery. Don’t take it for granted.
The weekend before I moved out of the apartment, Elly and the only two other friends I had in Sydney at the time, decided to take me out for drinks in the city to cheer me up. It obviously wasn’t going to fix things, but after four weeks of moping around, hysterically crying and constantly phoning Guy, it was worth a try. Plus, my friends, like all good friends, weren’t going to take no for an answer.
I really had no idea what happened that night. One-minute I was drinking shots of whatever expensive alcohol we could find in Guy’s cupboard; the next minute I was in a bar in the city; and the next minute I was being carried up the stairs in my apartment block by a very tall, dark, handsome stranger. I woke up on the bedroom floor in a pool of my own vomit. This is what my friends and the very handsome stranger told me happened.
The last thing I remember is being happy. I was sitting on the balcony in my apartment with three of the kindest people I’ve ever meet. Now, you wouldn’t have put us four together as friends if you had just met us, but somehow, in the huge city of Sydney, we were thrown together, and it just worked. So, after way too many drinks on the balcony and lots and lots of laughs, we headed into the city. Apparently, after being rude to a number of men, we were swiftly removed from bar one by a security guard. That was nothing new to me; I was definitely a girl’s girl and most of the time men just annoyed the shit out of me. Bar two was a lot more successful, so my friends decided to try and set me up with a few random men in an attempt to help me get over Guy.
That is all very well and good when you can string a sentence together, but not a good idea when you can’t even stand up. By bar three, I was crying uncontrollably, begging my friends to let me go home so I could phone Guy (we have all been there, but it is so not a good look), and we were denied entry. Some may say that was a disaster of a night out, but to be honest, that was what both my friends and myself were kind of expecting from that night. After a short taxi ride to ‘the Cross’ in Sydney, I was also denied entry to bars four, five and six. For anyone who knows ‘the Cross’ in Sydney, that is quite an achievement, as they tend to let anyone in. At that point, my friends realised I was a drunken, emotional mess and began to think I did actually need to go home. They decided to put me in a taxi and carry on with their night (I do not blame them one bit and looking back now, I am so very grateful). The next two hours of my life are a complete blackout, but this is what I gather happened, based on looking at phone records and talking to the handsome stranger.
God knows exactly how, but I somehow paid the taxi driver and entered my building, where there was only one lift and it had a huge sign stuck on it saying ‘broken.’ Of course, we did have a fire door key for situations like that, but Guy had taken it with him. I phoned him to ask him to drop the fire door key over as I was locked out (although I don’t remember, I was no doubt absolutely ecstatic to have an actual real reason to call him). In truth, I called thirty-five times. He ignored me. He even cut me off a few times. Bastard. I left messages and sent him texts, explaining about the lift and fire door key (some of which made sense and some of which did not). The only other people I knew in the whole of the southern hemisphere were currently drunk in the Cross. Guy knew that and still texted me back with ‘stop calling me’. Bastard.
I obviously started to get extremely upset. I have no idea how long I waited or didn’t wait, but I began to hammer in desperation on what I thought was the fire door. As the door opened, I was standing, in complete shock that the door had actually opened, hysterically crying, shoes in hand, dress around my waist (I have no idea why) and mascara all down my face.
The man who answered the door was obviously also shocked by what he was seeing at 2am on a Sunday morning and bewilderedly asked, ‘What are you doing?’
I’d never seen him before, and I thought he thought I was some sort of intruder in this very posh block of apartments. At the time, in my drunken state, I imagined myself hoping he would phone the police. Then I could at least sleep in a cell overnight; maybe the police would even phone Guy and make him come and get me. ‘Trying to go home,’ I answered, through my hysterical tears.
Half suspicious, half concerned, he asked, ‘Ok, where do you live?’
I answered through sobbing tears, and for some reason I apparently blurted out, ‘England.’
Now, obviously, as much as I love Sydney, the UK will always be my home, and I guess in my drunken emotional state I got a little confused between the two.
Again he eyed me suspiciously but began to soften. After God knows how long, he worked out that although my home was England, I lived upstairs (level 10 to be exact) and he had a fire key. Great! Later, the stranger told me he had never seen anyone so drunk in his life. After I tried to kiss him (of course I don’t remember any of that, so I may have tried to do a lot worse and he is too much of a gentleman to say so), he half carried me, half dragged me up ten flights of concrete stairs. After opening the door and walking into my apartment, I apparently turned around, extremely surprised, like I had never seen him before and asked, ‘Who are you, and what do you think you are doing here?’
I will be forever thankful to my friends for dragging me out for drinks that night (and getting me so drunk I could not function) and to the handsome stranger who was my hero that night and who has become my best friend since. But I am mostly thankful to my lying scumbag ex-boyfriend for cheating on me.
‘Life doesn’t always work out the way you think it will, but it always does work out.’ — Unknown