|THE RELATIONSHIP SERIES: PART 3|

Hey Dolls,

So, I have been to hell and back trying to get this post out to you guys.. well not LITERALLY to hell and back but let’s just say that a certain someone had to go to the gym, go to a work out class, sweat their asses off, take a shower at the gym JUST so she could sit at the gym’s lounge to use their internet to publish this bad boy. For those of you who didn’t quite follow that, that “someone” is me! I literally sat up in my bed, BEYOND frustrated with the fact that there is no wifi at my house and all my neighbours appear to have adopted the stingy route of protecting their routers with a bloody password. I seriously miss the days when you couldn’t care less if your own wifi was fucking up because the nice Johnson family next door always paid their bills on time and never had to deal with a wifi cut out!

I live in a house share and one would think this kind of bullocks would not exist in a house share but can you BELIEVE that my lovely landlords decided to have the router placed in one of my housemate’s room?.. The one housemate who has been giving me evil looks for 2 months straight now? I don’t know whose brilliant idea that was but this issue has seriously fucked my weekend up. I text my landlord and apparently the issue with the wifi is affecting the entire area… I beg to differ. BUT I can’t prove it without going into a certain ogres room so…. I have had to result to watching Television.. remember that thing? You know before personal computers came along and stole the show. Yup! That. I have resulted to watching that old thing!

ANYWAYYY…. rant over. You came here to read about Alias J. Oh Alias J. He was my biggest fuck up. You know the kind of guy you date that your sisters NEVER let it down that you dated them? You try and erase their entire existence from your life only for someone to say “hahaha remember when you dated that guy?? hahaha yeah you really fucked up with that one didn’t you? I took you for a stronger person but damn.. what a fuck up. Hahaha, I mean after you dated him, I just knew that I was ok because at least I have never dated such a fuck up” < Yup. Alias J was exactly that.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Seriously, there’s no way you could have dated more of a fuck up than Alias D” but YOU my friends, would be dead wrong! I did. I dated the worst of the worst.

Right… before I get into all the gory details, I want to explain that the morning that I met J, I had only just had 2 hours of sleep and was still technically drunk, a mess and on my way to work on a Sunday #retaillife #studentlife. So, I was in no sound mind to make the “right” decision about a French Chef who had the cutest smirk for a smile, puppy dog eyes, the right height, the right build and a certain bad boy je ne sais quoi about him. I want to make it very clear that typically, I do not go for “bad boys” BUT the bad boy-esque look in this guy wasn’t your typical “bad boy” look. Just one of those classic boys who would turn into a bad boy if need be – ONLY if need be and sometimes, that can be a good thing 😈.

I had just moved back to London after my last year at University and was back at my mum’s. It was quite possibly one of the best summers of my life. J had a motorbike (yes girls and boys – this French speaking, tall cutie-patootie was a rider 😍😎). I had never been on a motorbike before so when J showed up one day in front of my mum’s place on a warm summer’s night, with his motorbike and a spare helmet, I was blown away. He told me to jump on and I did, scared to death but composed. I put the helmet on and he told me to hold him close and not let go. I did exactly that and off we went. It.was.THE.most.exhilirating.time.of.my.life!

Our relationship definitely had a summer-time-fling vibe about it so when J still wanted to keep things going come October, I was a bit taken aback but went with it nonetheless – why not aye?

November was fast approaching and my mum had made the decision to leave London and move to the boring ass city I now currently live in. The pressure was on to find a house share in London as soon as possible because I sure as hell wasn’t ready to leave my Londoner roots after 3 years of living away so soon.

One night I was at J’s and he was saying how he was planning to move out of his place to live closer to central London. Then for some STUPID ass reason, something clicked in us both. Why were we struggling to find a place individually when we could just find a place together? Right? I mean why would I choose to look to find a house share with some random people who I had never met in my life when I could just rent a place with J – someone I knew – someone I got along with so well – someone who LOVED cooking (and I loved to eat)??? It was (at the time) a no brainer.

I told my mum about it and explained that it was only until I found a place to rent out with friends. I told her to not see it as me moving in with a boyfriend but for her to see it as me moving in with someone she knew, someone I knew instead of complete strangers. As persuading as I can be, she fell for it and gave us the go ahead.

J and I found an apartment fairly quickly. It was bang in the middle of zone 1and 2 so very close to central. The first month was very blissful; I did the shopping, J did the cooking. J was a provider and he just got shit done. If we needed to do anything, he just got it done. He sorted out all the paperwork and the apartment necessities. I really liked that about him. I was 21 and he was 26 so the age gap, although not that wide, definitely played a part as I had just finished Uni and J had already lived a fair bit of ‘normal’ life by then.

Nothing writing worthy happened in the next month either so I’ll just skip to the third month of living together. J started to bring random Apple products home; Mac Airs, Mac Pro’s, iPads etc. When I asked him about them he would say that he was just helping out a friend who had started a new second-hand electronics store. I really did not think anything of it at the time because the stuff would only stay with us for a day, two max and then they would be gone. Also, I had been to his friend’s store so everything seemed legit.

One day a friend of his came by. This guy was THE dodgiest guy I had ever seen in my life! The kind of guy that you would try your best to dodge if you saw him on your side of the pavement. Basically, if ‘criminal’ had a look, it would be him. In my mind, I was thinking why on EARTH is J hanging around with this guy? Two days later, my mum’s 24carat ring that she had given to me with gems and diamonds went missing!

Guys, as shallow as this may seem, I LITERALLY lost sleep over this! My mum gave it to me. I was going to give it to my daughter one day and start a tradition. I had planned it all out – in my head and it went missing. I was convinced J’s dodgy friend had taken it. I told J and he said he would confront him. Everyday I would ask after it until one day he confirmed that he had asked his friend and his friend had admitted to taking it to pawn it off. I was in BITS over this. I blamed J for letting his dodgy friend come into our apartment in the first place. All he did was try to comfort me and assure me that he would get me a different ring. I explained that it was not about the ring but about its sentiments. My MOTHER gave me that ring and he had just let his dodgy FRIEND come to OUR apartment to STEAL it then PAWN it off.

Our relationship become strained for a bit after ring-gate. I eventually rang my mum up and told her what had happened. She – being the self-proclaimed spiritual person she is – said that I would find the ring. In my frustration, I told her I wouldn’t because it had been pawned off. She kept on insisting so I just left it at that.

Everything seemed normal until one day I came home early from work and found J in the kitchen with lines of a suspicious white powder on the counter 😑😑😑. I of course immediately asked him what the substance was. Then, I kid you not guys, J’s demeanour, posture, expression completely shifted. It was literally like a scene from a scary movie. I stopped, composed myself then asked again about the white substance then J, without changing his expression said “what does it look like it is?”..😶

We had a staring match for what seemed like a lifetime. Then I walked to the bedroom area and just started packing my shit. I had watched ENOUGH movies to know that this was NOT some drama shit I was going to partake in. This dude had fucking COCAINE lined in OUR kitchen counter… COCAINE!! Fuck.that.shit.

He marched to where I was and asked me what I thought I was doing. I retorted “what does it look like I am doing?”. He. Switched. Next thing I know he pushed me, I banged the back of my head on the wall and fell slopped straight down to the floor. I looked at him – he looked at me. “You’re not going anywhere. I am not losing you ever. Do you understand me? Huh? Do you? You are not going to sit there and act like a naive little girl as if you didn’t know what had been going on all this time” I was still staring at him – completely quiet. “Where do you think all these nice things come from? The rent, the bills?? Off a fucking Chef’s salary?? All those gadgets I have gotten you? You are going to stay here with me and we are going to be together, forever!! You are not going anywhere!”😶

I was STILL staring at him. Dead in the eye. So many thoughts were going through my mind. Primarily, how I was going to get out of this situation ALIVE. I refused to be a statistic. This sonovabitch PUSHED me! My own father had never pushed me but this prick thought he could do it and keep me there with him. I’m not going to lie, I did, for a millisecond, consider just staying because the way J had switched, I really didn’t see how I could outsmart him into letting me break up with him. He knew where my sister lived and he could very easily (now) be the type of person to set someone’s house on fire over this shit.

When I was thinking about writing this story, I really struggled about thinking of what I should leave out and what I should go into more detail about. In the end, I decided to leave the bit about how I managed to get out of the apartment out but let’s just say, my sister ended up coming to the apartment and her and I were able to pack my shit up in a short time window-frame whilst J was out for a bit, contact a Man-with-a-Van and left before he got back. The ADRENALINE was REAL guys!!  We literally became super heroes in that moment. I don’t think I have ever moved so fast in my life. I was literally sweating my life out when we finally got in the van. Every moment that went by whilst we were packing my shit and throwing it into the van, was a moment closer to J appearing and fucking up all of our days.

Other memorable moments following my successful extraction from that apartment was J showing up at my work. I was working in a massive store in central London at the time. I had already told our security team to keep an eye out so that if he turned up, they would be ready. He came in clenching a coke can slit into two.. as in ready to take me down! I saw him from afar and was like OOHH shit! I was too far from the phone to get security. When J approached me, I was standing by a round table just going round and round as he spat a ray of threats at me. The boys I worked with must have seen the fear in my expression and came over. They told me to go to the back of the shop floor, call security and stay there whilst they “handled” the situation. An hour went by when I was told to come out of the back.

It didn’t just end there. J found ways of stalking me. I had to go back to where I was staying at my cousin’s place with a colleague every day I was working for a week. We’d find J at the front of the store or at the nearby tube station or on the bloody train we took! In the end, I made the decision for my sister and I to leave London. It simply was not safe to live there anymore. My job completely understood so there was no issue with them letting me go.

Before I went though, I bumped into J’s dodgy friend (remember him?). He told me that he hadn’t been able to sleep properly since he came to my apartment. He explained how J had taken him to a pawn shop that day to pawn my mother’s ring. I literally felt like he was stabbing me with a dagger when he was telling me this. I can’t explain the emotional turmoil that whole situation had caused me. He took me to the pawn shop and I explained to the owner that the ring was mine but he told me that I could only get it back if I at the very least paid him what he had paid J for the ring – £175. So I PAID to get MY OWN ring back.

A month after I had left London, I got a Facebook message from a girl who said that she was J’s girlfriend in France. She asked if she could call me and I hesitantly said that she could. She told me a story of how she had met J and that he had 2 children by 2 different women in France. One was 8 and the other was 5. She had fallen pregnant too but he beat her so bad that she had lost the baby. She also said that J was a wanted criminal in France and that he was a thief and drug dealer. The more she divulged, the more I just couldn’t believe that I had ever laid eyes on J let alone DATED him. How did I get myself into that situation??

Seriously, every time I sit on my bed to type down these stories for the Relationship Series, I become more and more concerned about my choice in men. What is it that I am doing wrong? – well there’s a lot I am doing wrong but why me? Why can’t I meet someone when I am still drunk who turns out to be a good boyfriend? Why do I have to break up with guys in such an explosive way?

The more I think about these questions, the more I realise that I don’t think I trust MYSELF to pick the next guy I date. Obviously I completely SUCK at it. I don’t even want to write about Alias R for the next instalment in the Relationship Series.. I just want to curl up and forget and erase… Oh if I could go back in time, I’d wish I never met any of them. I’d wish I never started dating.. surely a life of solitude is better than this.. right?

meh.. I’m sorry that I couldn’t end this one on a high guys but this is just literally how I am feeling after typing this piece :?.

xoxo