So, here we go then, with the rest of part 5.
So then, life after the break-up. Well, it didn't actually seem so bad. All my enthusiasm was gone, of course, We were getting on fine, Elle even telling me that I had turned back into the person she loved, instead of the boyfriend she was starting to dread even seeing! I was rather bewildered by the whole thing still, but all I could do was go with the flow as best I could! I was becoming sceptical about whether she loved me. At the time, I considered that if she loved me she would have made more of an effort to keep things together, sort of a 'love conquers all' thing. It was the same pressuring attitude of mine that had strained out relationship in the first place! I think very differently now. However, I had other reasons to think she was wrong about it as well, reasons that were far more valid. The whole way in which she had made the revelation, jealously about Leanne... maybe the reason she had not been able to say it before was not fear, but uncertainty. Maybe the way in which she had been 'forced' to say it was a very bad thing, and that episode not a spectacular miracle but actually one big cock-up from us both. And after all, it had been me that had asked Elle to prove what she said by becoming my girlfriend, to stop it looking like she was just saying it to get me away from Leanne. I had made her put her money where her mouth was, which had seemed fair enough at the time but already I knew I should not have asked.
So I doubted her love, which was depressing, but at least I could see the positive side of having lost a realtionship that was maybe a far worse thing than I had thought. Eleanor, meanwhile, did not talk to me much for a while- not a cut off, just she was VERY busy with work and rapidly approaching exams. Her life was not improving. She was still unhappy and upset, and was beginning to doubt if she could even do it at all. For my part, my life was not advancing or changing. I was still writing but sporadically, the great swell of recovery I had felt with Elle had petered out.
But despite that gloomy report, things were ok. There was no resentment and there was still the odd burst of intensity. And indeed we had every intention of carrying on as we had been doing so before the distraction of the relationship. And in the tail end of March we were arranging for me to go see her in London again. She was far too busy to come down and see me, but we wanted to meet, and having done it once I was far better prepared, mentally, to do it again! So long as she actually met me at the station this time!
I was due to see meet her on Sunday afternoon, stay for a few days, go home mid-week, and then she would come see me a week and a half later, the last weekend before Easter when she would be off home up north again. However, the night before I was going to go there the plan changed somewhat.
We were talking things over, making preperations for the day to come. And then as the conversation drifted slowly into about 1:30 am, it turned into the most staggering argument- about EVERYTHING. I was aggreived that she was going to try things with other guys having rejected me, she was aggreived that I seemed to be demanding that if she did not pledge herself to me then she was not allowed to see anyone else. I accused her of not loving me. This did NOT go down well. And soon we were arguing about every damn thing we ever did EVER, and us being is this was not a polite, or even mock-polite, argument., It was not even snide and unpleasant. It was downright horiffic. For an example:
When Elle suggsted that although we loved each other, we did not work, I angrily made out that those two statement were contradictory. She said they were not, and I replied, with all due wit, tact and sophistication:
"YES THEY F***ING ARE YOU STUPID F***ING WHORE!"
Only the spelling was worse; I must have been very aggravated (in case you could not guess).
I said that I thought she had promised that everything would be ok, she said now she thought she was wrong about that. I said I did not want to live in a world where somehow it worked that she loved me but did not want to be with me. And we decided it was probably best if we never saw each other again. Elle was crying, constantly. And she said fine, it was done, it was all over.
...
Only very few things are THAT simple in my story. Because suddenly in a space of ten minutes we went from utter, murderous hatred to somehow getting all soppy at each other with a quick fire barrage of 'I love you's at each other. And I was saying that no matter what happened in future, she would ALWAYS be my Princess, and she said how much I had made her smile, and then the previous hour was just UTTERLY forgotten in a spontaneous outburst of emotion and desperation to be with each other.
Desperation indeed. Sunndely Elle was asking me to come sooner. As soon as possible. She wanted me RIGHT NOW, and I wanted her, but it was impossible to come in the middle of the night, so then I was checking train timetables for the earliest practical train to get to her tomorrow. And we needed each other with as great a passion as we ever had done, maybe greater still. It was amazing, and still rather incomprehensible. But just like everything else that had made no sense to me, I just went with the flow.
Rather inevitably, the enormous passion had worn off by the time I actually GOT to her. I had had very little sleep, the train journey was appalling, and she looked tired and miserable as well. Still, at least there had been no nervous waiting for me this time- to time for it-, and she DID meet me at the station, and whilst it wasn't the passionate burst of brilliance we had so imagined, we WERE very happy to see each other!
We had a good time. She was, again, glad of the company in her lonely university room (still as nosiy and irritating as it had been before!), and I, obviously, was always glad to be with her, and it was nice to be together and free of the frustration and stress that had led to our big argument. She got a little drunk that night and as we lay together she said she would come and see me THIS weekend instead, and stay until she had to go home the week after- she just couldn't be doing with staying in her shithole uni life any longer; she wanted to either be with me or home.
The visit went downhill from there. We actually had a good time at the cinema together, watching Monsters Inc, but everything else was not so good. She got a phone call from her mother and something cropped up which meant that she would not be able to seeme that weekend after all. And shortly after it became clear that she might not be able to come the NEXT weekend as planned either, in fact, she could guarantee nothing until after Easter.
And I wa SO tired, having gotten up early to come see her and finding it impossible to sleep at her place. And I was less well prepared for wondering around London than I imagined, I panicked a few times, and kept whimpering at Elle how I could not take it any more and wanted to go home.
So all in all, it was not our best time together. Even so, I did not think it had been a negative thing. But, after leaving that place for the last time ever, when she hugged me goodbye at the station, I knew something was wrong- the hug was 'weak', stilted, forced. No emotion behind it. I wanted to put it down to tiredness, but I had a bad feeling about it. I turned back to look at her as I got at the train, as I always kept sight of her as long as possible when she left. But she had gone already, and not lingered. I had never done this before- had to take the journey home after a time with Elle, all other times but one it had been her going home, and that other time when I had last come to see her, she had come back with me. The train was horrid, and I felt all alone. It was awful.
We talked a little bit by ICQ in the fays to come, and then she was off back home for Easter. And then... SILENCE.
Dead silence. I got no replies from her at all, from mails, text messages, or phone calls. She did not appear on any instant messaging programme- not to me, anyway.
I started to panic. I knew the silewnt treatment is what she had given her old, scary net 'friend' Darren when she had wanted rid of him. And I knew it was what she had done to me last year, SO long ago now, in that summer with Nathan.
She did get back to me in early Aptril- but only to give me devastating news. For ages we had always said we would watch the new Star Wars film together- we were, more than anything else, big Star Wars freaks! We had planned it all for so long! But now it was time to buy tickets in advance, and I was desperatrely texting her about dates. And she gave me a quick message back to say she could no longer make it.
No longer make it? HUH? That is when I knew, for sure. She was not busy or occupied or unable to talk back to me. She was DEFINITELY doing it on purpose. She wanted out. Just two weeks back she had been desperate for me to come see her at once; and now she was cutting me off dead.
I TRIED to stay calm, I really did! But my whole life had become on inextricably wound around Eleanor's that this sudden parting with no xplanation was too much for me to take. I knew I could not go on without her, for certain- I was convinced with that. There had to be something I could do, SOMETHING! I posted and texted and called and hounded and BEGGED her to say something, ANYTHING! Just what was going on, what had I done, what had happened? The friendship bracelet she had made me a year before, that I had worn religiously ever since, finally fell apart in this time. Everything had fallen apart.
She finally got in touch with me again at the end of April, sending me a llong mail that included this paragraph:
"I am sorry I have treated you so badly lately, I really am. I cannot deny the fact that I have been a total *****. I have just been feeling so frustrated by everything including the whole thing between us lately that I just couldn't bare to talk to you and it just got out of hand. I am sorry. I think the reason I would never answer the phone to you is that I simply couldn't bare to talk to you. I know that sounds harsh but it is true! I know that we would be on the phone for hours and you would be shouting at me and we would be arguing for ages and I would end up crying and you would be mad and I just couldn't face that. I still can't. I'm sorry Mike. Truly! It's just too much. So please stop phoning me. It is getting embarrassing having my phone ringing all the time apart from anything. I promise I will talk to you more via email, messenger, text etc if you will please just stop phoning me. Please!"
I agreed. However, things were not to get any more civil any time soon. Things were going to get worse- worse than they had been over the Nathan thing, FAR worse.
The final bit of part 5, that I shall post tomorrow or as soon as I can, will tell of the dreadful words and things that followed, the way it was all SOMEHOW salvaged- before telling of the very final time I ever saw her, before rather than all ending in a bang, it all simply fizzled away.
So then... the end of part 5, which will take us to the last time I ever saw Elle. Though that is not quite the end of the story...
Early attempts to patch things up did not go well. When Elle said that she would talk to me more by Messenger and mail if I stopped calling her, I kind of assumed that she would talk to em EVERY time I wanted to talk to her, like in the old days. This was obviously not happening, and so soon I started to phone her again, feeling betrayed. This, of course, only upset her more, and the whole of what followed was conducted in an atmosphere of aggravation and anger.
Still, amongst it all- especially at first, when I was happy to be simply talking to her, after a month apart- we managed some civilised conversation and talking over of the situation. She added to what she had said before, saying that everything had just become such a hassle that she didn;t think she wanted to see me again.
"I can see that me breaking contact with you effected you rather badly. Far more than I had anticipated actually. I guess I never really saw it from your point of view. Only my own. That I did not want to talk to you and that was as far as it went. I'm sorry. I never meant to make you feel like that. And then I am ashamed to say that when I read about your reaction to me not contacting you for the first time, I thought to myself, How pathetic, just get a grip! I guess I underestimated just how dependant on me you were. Which I do not like really I am afraid. I know it is hardly your fault. But I never ever meant for you to become that attached and dependant! I know that probably sounds really horrible but you wanted me to be honest and honest I am being."
And there was an important point, how I had become attached and dependant. And I was, I really was. I couldn;t imagine doing anything at all without Elle by my side; with her I had become more healthy and happy far faster than I could have imagined, she had made me feel like a normal guy more than any other way that I can conceive of, and the idea that I would have to go on without her was abohorrent to me. Ahd that was exactly the sort of thing she hated, the sort of pressure she did not want- the reason why she had broken off the relationship, for I thought it had been a green light for me to be as needy as I liked. For so long I had been so careful and kept it as casual as she wanted but these weird few months had undone it all. If only there had been some way for me to tell, but I was so blind; just as I never Elle starting to feel more for me at the end of last year, I had not seen the trouble I was causing since the start of this.
I had suggested to her that things between us had become too complex.
"Yes I think you have probably hit the nail on the head there Mike. I really think you have become the biggest complicationin my life. Well apart from the fact that I have so much work to do this summer of course in order to ot fail. And as my life is so ridiculously full that my stress levels are reaching breaking point. And as something has to give itonly makes sense that it should be the biggest complication. I know this will sound terrible to you but this is what has been going through my mind lately. Over Easter and the last week or so, although I have still been super stressed and running out of time, I have felt much less stretched in too many directions so to speak. And the only reason I can think for this is because I haven't been constantly agonising about finding the time for seeing you and when I wasn't even talking to you, it was like you didn't even exist and my life just seemed so much more simple and managable. Please don't shout at me for saying this. I don't mean to upset you. I really don't. I am just trying to say it how it is! I am hoping you will be grateful for my honesty. I just hope you can forgive me for being so brutal!"
But she added something more.
"OK so you can take confusion but not abandonment. Mike although I am not clear what I want to do, I know I don't want to abandon you. I will still want to keep in contact with you and have my friend to talk to via email. No matter what! I don't want to lose that. You are too good a friend to lose completely. Besides which I still want to be able to support and encourage you through submitting more work etc. and getting a career off the ground. And of course also want to hear all theupdates on how it is going. And I want you to be that friend again who could give me advice when I was upset and depressed and didn't know what to do rather than being the course of my upset and depression. I miss that friend. I would like him back again, and I think he might possibly come back if we carry on communicating via email etc. But no, I don't want to completely abandon you!
And yes of course I am still supporting you. How could I not. I am so proud of all these changes you are making. I think it is fantastic. Oh believe me you are more normal than you think. YOu seem to draw this definite line between you and the rest of society when the truth of the matter is that you kind of blend in really. And that line is becoming less and less clear every day with every change and development. Before you know it that line will be completely behind you and you probably won't even realise it until someone like myself points it out to you. SO please just keep going. Even if it seems like you are getting nowhere, people like myself are noticing the progress!"
Such reasonable words soothed me. But I did not have any intention of agreeing. I was going completely off the rails by this point. Her idea of only talking to me by mail, just as we had met, just did not work in my mind. I wanted to SEE her, to be with her! I was doing my best to stop myself from breaking down completely but I knew that if this decision not to see me again became final, I would not be able to take it.
After many delays, she agreed to talk it over with me on ICQ. But not long into the discussion, it became very clear to me that this was not a discussion, it was a statement. She had TAKEN that decision to not see me again, at least, not for a very long time.
"You never had any intention of discussing this, did you?" I said.
"Well, my attitude kinda hardened over the weekend," she said.
So there it was. And so I rather collapsed. There was an argument she walked out of right there and then. And more arguments to follow, mail, messenger, phone, just as there had been the year before with Nathan, though worse with the feeling of extra betrayal, and a conviction by me that everything was over in my life and it was not worth living any more.
In one conversation she said I was in tears because I kept reminding her that she insisted she loved me. She said that had all been a mistake and I should not hold her to it. That made me PARTICULARLY mad. Just two months before she had been crying at me because I had suggested she did not love me. Now she was crying because I suggested she DID. In retrospect, I only have sympathy for her confused feelings, but at the time it just made me SO mad!
I threatened to come down to her at university and see her, whether she wanted me to or not, which of course only made her upset and somewhat terrified. I hurled abuse at her some more, and in the end, threatened to kill myself again. "Oh, like I didn't see THAT coming!" she retorted.
I meant it, though. I wasn't certain, but I really didn't want to go on living any more. It was just hard to go ahead and do it, I got as far, after another argument with her, as getting out and loading the shotgun. I stared at it for about 30 minutes, wondering whether to go ahead. It wasn't the first time I had considered this, and gotten close (I could tell you about a VERY amusing attempt to kill myself in London years before... but maybe another time). I remember how I had thought the year before, as described in part 3, how getting back with Elle after the Nathan thing had 'proved' that it was not worth killing yourself because things could always get better. I didn't feel like that now; what I felt was it didn;t matter if things got better, they would only get crappy again.
I put the gun away. I thought it was worth one more chance. Hell, maybe another one of those silly miracles would happen again, eh?
Shortly afterwards she agreed to see me again
I am not sure how it happened; we were talking on the phone, again. That we were still talking after such horrid, horrid things had been exchanged was, if nothing else, proof of a relationship between us that was very hard to kill. She had sworn that, quite aside from whether she wanted to come (which seemed doubtful), there was far too much for her to do and worry about. But then, there she was, saying she could spare two days in June. I should have been leaping for joy, but all I could do was moan that that was another month away, and I could not take it- I needed her NOW. This was finally too much for Elle who out her foot down and snapped back at me that that was the best damn offer I was going to get so I could either accept it or not, there was nothing else. That kinda did the trick.
In the month that followed I calmed down a lot, and the point behind a lot of the hysterics I had just shown seemed rather lost on me. A lot of it didn't seem so important any more. I guess all the anger and emotion and stupidity on my part had killed it all. I did not feel overjoyed that she was coming- just satisfied and very, VERY relieved. Maybe it WOULD be alright after all, you know? After so long, it would be silly for it to have ended like this.
I got that familiar feeling in the days before she came which kinda brought the old magic back; sleepless nights and LONG days and the endless minutes on the day itself before she came!
Two days before she came there was disaster, as Elle was mugged on the way home. A guy assaulted her from behind and stole her phone, she screamed and screamed and screamed but to no avail, he was too strong for her to resist. Luckily, she was only superficially hurt, but she was in utter hysterics when she ran back to her roon, Typically, I had gone to bed early that night and was not there to comfort her; her sister was on the toilet and could not answer the phone to her in time, she came onto the boards to find SOMEONE to talk to and calm her down- and spent some time talking to Rex, who did just that (thanks, Rex). The day after (me barelling her with messages after getting her off-line ones, to see if she was alright) she felt a LOT better; Elle is a strong girl. She soon forgot about it, except that it added to her growing hate of her life down in London. She still wanted to come.
The final minutes finallyt ticked by. And then there she was, at the station, me meeting her like many times before. It had been three months since I had seen her. Since the very first time we had met on these forums, there had never been three months gone in which I had not seen her. I was not sure at the time how I had survived, but here she was!
This was the FOURTH time when I had met her that I had to back off at first lest I go too fast. The first time we met, of course. The SECOND time we met, when we were not sure if it would all go as well as the first again. And the time we had met after the Nathan... unpleasantness, when we no longer knew what we wanted. This time, again, I knew there were possibilities but I had to play the gentle touch.
Oh yes, there WERE possiibilities. Late at night in my brother's old room (I was re-decorating my own), two weeks before she came, I was talking to Elle; we were getting on much better again by now, I had written her a couple of stories that she had liked very much, and we were talking freely and without argument, and I asked her if, seeing as she had had none before, we met, if she missed the sex since we had 'broken up'.
"Sex WOULD be nice," she said back. I thought very long and hard about that, about what it meant, if it was a good idea, after everything. And I came to the simple conclusion:
"Yeah... she's right."
And so two weeks later, there I was entertaining Elle, treading on egg shells, being friendly but not TOO friendly, and waiting for the chance to take some comfort with her again, and make everything seem ok.
We had a good time together, far better than last time, talking, laughing, playing games. She lay, tired, on my bed, and with U2 playing in the background I snuggled up to her on it; I gave her one of my massages that she liked so much and then- in time with the music,; I am not sure if she noticed but I thought it was rather smooth- I kissed her, and for the fourth time it paid off as she kissed me back, and everything felt just fine again...
It was good, a good time. We had just one argument- right at the end, sadly- something to do with Thora Birch's breasts. It made far more sense at the time, I am sure. She spent most of the time resting; it was very hot and she seemed very badly affected by the heat; she lay exhausted on my bed as I nabbed every damn fan in the house and trained it upon her. And this was a girl who had been to Africa! But it was the humidity that seemed to kill her.
Before she left the house to go to the station, she gave me a hug. In complete opposition to the hug she had given me when I left London three months before, this was NOT a sterile hug. This was a GREAT hug, full and friendly and full of emotion. I loved it. It was like she was saying that everything was just fine after all.
At the station, I said to her "This is the last time you will be making this journey, eh?" I meant between Chelmsford and her room at uni- she would be living in a house with friends next year.
"Not the LAST time!" she said, thinking I meant she would never be here again. I smiled and explained what I meant. But it turned out that what she thought I meant, was true. It WAS the last time, up to the present day, at least. I have not seen her since.
There was no argument, or final confrontation. A few heated words, but nothing else at all. It fizzled to nothing. Elle's confidence was given a fatal blow when word came through that she had failed her exams, and needed to take re-takes. I could not believe she had failed, Elle being SUCH a clever girl. But I knew what the problem was. Her heart was not in it. Not any more, it had all been too much. The dreadul accomodation, journeying, loneliness, the drudgery of the course, the trouble with me, the mugging... it had taken its toll.
Elle was considering coming to see me again in September. Ben (Scoundrel) was organising a social thing with an old friend of his and Elle wanted to come and was getting me to help organise it, when one day she stopped talking to me again. This was getting depressingly familiar now. I actually straight asked her by text if she had decided to never talk to me again. This sparked a conversation- it seemed the answer was yes. She kept telling me to leave her alone but I persisted, and she explained.
"Mike if this will get you to stop bothering me then yes i an seriously considering it. I'm sorry but the fact is that i have been happier since coming home... away from london and everything else and i an ashamed to say it but yes that does include you. I'm sorry."
It wasn't for certain, though. She didn't want to never hear from me, just not right now, and she would think things over. Before this was the point I would have snapped and argued... but I didn't want that any more. I just accepeted it, and hoped.
"Thank you and again i'm sorry!"
Which was the last thing she said to me in proper conversation. There were to be a couple more brief exchanges- none very pleasant, She decided soon after to never see or talk to me again, and leave the boards. I didn;t know, though- she didn't tell me. I just fired messages into the void after her, unanswered.
So, that was that, the end of the crush. But a few unanswered questions, and a few more events, remain, including the final crisis point at which I finally managed to get over the whole thing, and taking us up to the present day. Consider part 6 to come a kind of epilogue to the whole thing.
There, part 5 done. Thanks for reading!
I do feel your last in-person meeting was a pleasant one. Although that is an emotional roller coaster ride: I love you, I don't love you, Come see me, stay away, let's be friends, leave me alone, ect... If I may say so it seems your being lead around by your nose a bit. I don't know Edna nor do I pretend too. I 'm just going on what I have read in Ush's story. If Edna was to post (Oh and how I wish she would) we may get a different prospective. I'm mean no disrespect to you Ush at all. I am certain of the fact that Ush has tried to make this story as real and truthful as possible. I don't question your honesty Ush, although it has been my experience that when someone tells a story from their side little things that meant nothing to them could have made a world of difference to the other. What I'm trying to say is that if I had my wish I would like to hear what Edna thinks of this story which has us all so captivated. I love the story and I can't help but stand on the side of Ush. Well I think thats enough typing for me, great story Ush...AGAIN!
Oh, well, I have tried to be honest about the nasty things I did. I may not of actually hit and hurt her but I DID scare her; I threatened to kill myself, threatened to come see her when she did not want to be seen, and I was needy and insensitive and argumentative... I mean, I know Elle did questionable things as well, but she owned up, just as I did, and I think blame can only be joint!