In 2003 I met a local woman in my local pub and we hit it off. And even this was because she spoke to me first. She was a daft spontaneous person but I liked her and she did become my girlfriend. Something wasn’t right though, and through a combination of my lack of relationship experience and her sensitivity and peculiarity, it didn’t last that long. We broke up but kept things going in a messy way, even managing to join up in Australia for a month. It was fraught with arguments and awkwardness and she seemed completely unhinged at times. She was going to stay with her friend backpacking in Australia after I returned but she apparently missed me or home or whatever and she came back not long after I did. It all broke down completely not too long after that.

I’d been upset and relieved by the end of my first relationship and based on my life up to that point, I had no reason to suspect I’d be with anyone else any time soon. However,. I’d met up with some friends in York for a Halloween fancy dress night out and the sister of one of my friends turned up looking rather nice. I liked KC but didn’t make a move and someone else ended up seeing her briefly. But something changed and we somehow got in touch and started seeing each other. It wasn’t ideal for me as she had a 7 year old child. I never wanted children of my own and I wasn’t really interested in being around someone else’s. This may have been one of several reasons why we didn’t last very long together, between 2004 and 2005.

Not too long after that second relationship, I began seeing and hearing from the sister of one of my friend’s. MC had liked me when we were at school together. I’d liked her too, but at school I was 17 and she was 14 and it didn’t seem right. By 2005 she’d become someone I really liked though and I envied her long time partner who she lived with over in Huddersfield. It soon became clear that her relationship with her fiancé who was ten years older than her wasn’t going that well anymore. I didn’t pursue her, but she made ways for us to begin seeing each other. Firstly for favours and design work. Then much more, whilst she was still living with her partner. I didn’t like the dishonesty of what we were doing but I loved that we were. I didn’t think we’d end up being together but the writing had already been on the wall for her relationship. By 2006 we were regularly seeing each other and she even convinced her partner that she needed time away by herself and was going to Barcelona for a few days. Of course, she was really going with me. I don’t know if he suspected anything was going on, but he let it happen anyway. We had the best time and I was really in love with her. Her relationship drew to a close and after some months she moved into my house with her dog and cat in 2007. MC had a drink problem from well before we got together, but initially it didn’t seem to matter too much. Later, it would spiral into a seemingly never-ending nightmare from which I would never escape.
We had a lot of very good times together and I can still fondly look back at the many holidays and events and general times together when things were going well. There were still good times even when things were going downhill.
Things were up and down. We had conversations about having children but I was absolute in my stance of never wanting them. I said “I wanted to want them”, because then we wouldn’t have to have these arguments about it. She wasn’t even sure she wanted them herself, but she didn’t like the idea that I was putting a total block on that option for her. Her horrific incidents with alcohol abuse, both at home and in public grew increasingly unbearable and exasperating. I can’t even bear to think about how grim it all was a lot of the time. By 2012 she’d had to spend some months in Rehab because she was an ever increasing chronic alcoholic and she’d lost 3 good jobs due to this condition. I’d even proposed to her at the Queen’s Golden Jubilee on the Mall in London when we were dressed as Yeoman Warders (Beefeaters) in 2012 to try and get her to feel more stable and less needing of alcohol. However, by 2013 she had moved out of the house which she’d insisted upon being on the mortgage for just a year earlier. I think she had intended to make a clean break, but we were too invested in each other despite the difficulties. She relapsed in a bad way whilst she was living alone in 2013 and 2014 and injured herself quite badly and had to spend time in hospital. In 2015 she had managed to get fully clean and it felt miraculous. We possibly had the best year of our relationship despite her making me re-mortgage my house to pay her off a lot of money she didn’t deserve. By the end of 2016, everything had changed, and although she was still sober, we were at a total end. She’d started seeing a fellow recovering alcoholic that had been keen on her since their time together in rehab in 2012.
By the beginning of 2017 we were completely out of each others lives in the most non-amicable way possible.
Despite having nothing to do with her and no desire to see her in any way whatsoever, a part of my brain is either unaware, confused or unhappy about it and still makes me dream of her, even in 2022 at the time of writing this. It is annoying.

I have very mixed feelings about my time with MC.

From what I understand, since we knew each other she has developed Vasculitis, It’s an auto-immune disease that has unfortunately made her almost unrecognisably obese.