Although I was very much enjoying my new life, I obviously thought about Guy a lot in the first six months after our break up. One hell of a lot, if I’m honest. Anyone that has been through a breakup at some stage of their life knows how damn hard it is to just cut someone off like that, especially after that amount of time. It really does feel like a bereavement period, and I think I mourned our relationship a lot longer than Guy did.
During that six-month mourning period, I decided I would do some research on what happened, and my first starting point was who he was with the night he lied to me. My first port of call was, of course, Facebook, and with the help of some of his ‘Facebook friends,’ I learnt of a blond woman that he had fucked (sorry, I was going to use a polite term here, but I couldn’t think of a more appropriate word) on New Year’s Eve while I was in the UK. I am guessing she was also the woman he was with the night he lied to me. After completely obsessing over this woman for at least a few months, including googling both him and her and stalking a lot of his friends and family on Facebook, I found out her name, that she was an accountant (boring!) and that they were now living together.
Of course, finding that information out didn’t make me feel any better in the slightest, and in fact it made me feel one hell of a lot worse, but as breakups go, I think that was perfectly normal behaviour. Of course, at first I blamed everything on her, and the words slut, home wrecker, bitch and ugly were used more than once. I literally obsessed over both of them, checking Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at least once a day. Of course all of my friends told me I was ‘crazy’ and ‘only hurting myself’ but deep down, for some reason, I wanted to continue. It became almost a hobby for me, which was both destructive and therapeutic at the same time. I was like a drug addict, just desperate for any sort of sliver of information on either of their lives.
Then, after a few months and one hell of a lot of obsessive online stalking, I got to see a picture of her, and my heart sank as I realised I knew her! The shock was overwhelming, but I realised she was one of his sisters’ friends. I began to think back to the first time I had ever met her. Two of my best friends from the UK had been staying with us, and I began to recall that night very well. My two friends and I were all dressed up, ready for a night on the town. Saying I was excited to have them in Sydney was an understatement. I was wearing a short, tight purple dress, much to Guy’s and his sisters’ disgust. That wasn’t how I normally dressed in Sydney, but I guess my friends brought out a side of me that was often kept hidden while living with Guy, a side that just wanted to have fun.
My two friends from the UK were both extremely pretty and wearing outfits that were just as revealing as mine, so when Kayley introduced us to two of her friends (the only two friends I ever met of hers!), I had a feeling it would not end well. All the women were bitchy toward us from the start. It was obvious that Guy’s sisters had told them all sorts of awful stories about me, I’m sure only half of which were true! When one of the women started asking me about what I did for a living, knowing full well that I didn’t have a working visa at the time, and completely looking down her nose at me, I turned to my friend and whispered, ‘What’s her name again? When my friend, who was a little tipsy, answered with, ‘God knows, but she is boring as hell so let’s just call her yoghurt,’ I couldn’t help but laugh.
Now, for some reason, it had taken me all that time to figure out that in fact the woman Guy was now dating was ‘yoghurt!’ As one of Kayley’s friends, I knew she had been at the New Year’s party where he had cheated on me, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t put all the pieces together sooner. I had always wondered how his sisters would take to him having another girlfriend and had always assumed they would be just as vile to every girl he went out with. But I had never even considered a friend of theirs as a potential girlfriend, mainly because they had so few friends. But it made perfect sense: she was, in fact, the fourth sister they were all looking for. A few weeks after realising who the woman was, I sent my two friends from the UK an email to tell them who she was and to have a good gossip about it. After sending the email, for some reason, I thought to myself, I better just double check . . .
And so, for the last time ever, I went onto Kacey’s Facebook page. What I saw made me feel sick to my stomach, and my body literally began to shake as I went into complete shock. As I stared at a picture of Guy and ‘yoghurt’ drinking champagne and toasting their engagement, tears began to stream down my face. They had literally gotten engaged the night before; bad timing on my part or what! Although I completely broke down at work, mainly from shock, the picture didn’t make me feel bitter, jealous or like I wanted to kill them both, like I had felt in those first few months of our breakup. For the first time, I felt happy for him. The woman in the picture looked like a nice normal woman that would fit in with any family. She didn’t look nasty, or bitchy, like the women I remembered. She was slim, with medium length hair, lots of makeup but, all in all, looked very presentable. A bit like the girl I tried so very hard to be before I met Ben. Although it hurt like hell—after all, I had lived with him for four years whereas he had only lived with her for a few months—seeing that picture really did lay some demons to rest. Although what he did to me hurt very much, after seeing this picture, I truly was happy for him and I was able to let go a little and appreciate what I had in my own life. Apparently, they got married only six short months later. Shortly afterwards, she gave birth to their first child.
‘It may hurt to let go but sometimes it hurts more to hold on.’ — Unknown.