The Weirdest Conversation this Week Award…

goes to my ex.

Not my ex husband, but my ex from over 8 years ago.

While in town the other day shopping with my Mum, this guy bailed us up and scared the begeebies out of me. I hadn’t seen him since we broke up back when I was 22 and we hadn’t talked since. I was pretty angry with him at that stage and he’d been a right royal git to me, pushy bugger. So it was a shock to him when I said it was all over as we were engaged at that stage, his 3rd engagement mind you and he just wasn’t getting the point that it wasn’t working out. We split, I left that workplace, moved on, met someone else, got married etc. He stayed behind, married his job, and never moved on.

Well we chatted with my Mum playing chaperone, he gave me his mobile number, and I never rang it or messaged him. Frankly I didn’t want to go there.

Then my home phone rang the other night and it was him. He’d looked up my name on the whitepages and chose that moment to call me and apologise for ‘being a prick all those years ago’. He then proceeded to tell me about how I had made a profound statement on his life and he hadn’t stopped thinking about me and then about 2 Christmases ago he was alone and lonely and life was getting him down so he took a gun out and tried to shoot himself, only problem being the bullet got lodged in the barrel or something and it didn’t happen. But since then he had taken stock of his life and was going through and trying to sort out all the shit he had created over the years including getting in contact with all the people, girlfriends etc he had ever had anything to do with and apologising for it.

I suggested he watch High Fidelity, seemed he had something in common with John Cusack.

Did I need to hear all this?

Now I’m probably being really harsh, but seriously I didn’t need to hear this. I didn’t need to hear that I’d made an impact on this guy, who while I was dating him was more pissed with the fact that I refused to sleep with him and would leave porn around his place in an effort to ‘change my mind’. Video nights were really dodgy, and frankly he was a sleaze. What I saw in him while at the tender age of 19 was anyones guess. He was a slightly overweight, IT geek, slept with a very large shotgun under his bed, spent more time at his work than anywhere else, and had no earlobes or a chin. I  think I was smitten with the fact that someone liked me. Yes, I have/had small self-esteem issues, he has huge self-esteem issues. He was 10 years older than me and swept me off my feet while on rebound from another boy, not a good idea kiddies. But since then I had moved on. I knew moving back to the area I would probably run into him at some stage, it’s taken 2 years but hey, it was as bad as I envisioned it in my mind too. I couldn’t help this boy then, and I can’t help him now, he’s not my problem anymore and I can’t see myself ever sitting down with him having coffee and chats. I don’t want to go to that place of self-misery that he exists in since it will drag me down as well and frankly I’m selfish these days when it comes to my self-worth and happiness. I forgave and forgot about him years ago, and told him that I was over all that, he didn’t need to dwell on it. But the life-line he needs can’t come from me, no matter how much he alluded to it over the phone.

I’m getting re-married this year. I have my man, my own place, my own friends, my family, and frankly I’m quite happy. I can’t and wont go back there and fingers crossed he got the point the other night that really, I’m in a relationship and don’t have this need to relive old issues.

So mate, the ol’ wooden spoon goes to you. Thanks for the grief you gave me all those years ago, for dictating who I could have at *my* 21st birthday party, for making me so damn angry that I almost broke all the bones in my hand punching a concrete wall and scaring my mother, and for making me realise that life is only as bad as you make it, and working to death is not an option. May you one day find a person who makes you happy and is strong enough to drag you out of that pit of self-misery that you live in.

Sorry but I’ve got a happy life to live.