Some say life gets easier as you get older.
Some say its the other way around.
Me, personally life is never easy.
This is the first in a what will be a series of blog entries about my life.
Even as a boy my life always seemed difficult, being moved around the country as my fathers job changed, losing friends, then having to make new friends only to lose them again a few years later. As time went on, I guess i distanced myself slightly from making new friends, as I had already lost them (at least in my head). Until eventually I just gave up on making friends at all.
Whether this is a major flaw in my life, I do not know. I am not someone who could answer this sort of question, but I guess it has had an impact on my life as I moved onwards towards manhood.
You see, I didn’t have any girlfriends throughout my school life due to my solitude and distance from other kids; and even into college, even though I was asked by one girl many times I was too shy / scared / to admit I liked her. Thoughts of what others may think of me if I was seen with her were also running through my head. So to make life simpler I kept saying “I don’t know, I don’t know” until eventually she gave up.
There are times I look back and wonder “what if?” but as everyone will always say.. do not dwell in the past because we cannot change it. So I guess you have to leave the past behind.
Eventually I did meet someone and after 2 years we got married. After 4 years my wife gave birth to a lovely little boy. At this point our marriage seemed to go south. Whether It was me not pulling my weight, or depression on her side, I guess I will never know. But when our son was 1 1/2 years old, she left. to be with another man.
The day I found out, she just picked up her car keys and left. Even though our little boy was asleep upstairs she left without him. For 3 days nobody knew where she was. Her family, her sister, her work colleagues, nobody. When eventually we did find her and tried to sort things out I finally found the real reason she left. She has left me with a mountain of debt.
Despite what my ex had done, we believed our sons future and happiness should come first and so it was agreed we would try to split the time with him equally and I was to see my son 3 days every week. but this was only because my ex “wanted a social life” so didn’t want him over the weekend.
I was pretty devastated about my divorce and looking back now, wish I had taken the opportunity to spend all of the free time over those 3 days playing and teaching my son as much as possible. Sadly, I got quite depressed and let him play on his own a lot of the time. My trust was also at an all time low. A few years passed and now that he could talk, he was becoming more interesting and tried to play with him more and more each day. We had lots of fun, but he was still quite independent.
During the years I was depressed, I had turned to a computer program called ICQ and had been typing to a lady in Hong Kong. She was quite a lot older than me, but seemed very kind and was always there to listen to the problems I was going through. She even sent my son birthday presents. After just over a year of chatting on ICQ I could feel the depression fading away and I was starting to feel alive again. I was so grateful for her help we had discussed meeting. It was decided I would fly over and meet her; to thank her in person. It took a few months to prepare i.e. where I would fly from, which hotel I would stay in etc. and then I was all set.
I was really excited about this. I had never been so far away from home and heard Hong Kong was amazing. We had planned a few trips we would do whilst I was there to see as much as possible; it all seemed like my life was turning around.
One week before I was due to fly out. She started to be different, not herself. I presumed it was just nerves for meeting someone from the other side of the world. But then a massive blow to my trust yet again. I asked if I could phone her (yes, anyone reading this now will be thinking “OH MY GOD, you are saying you have never spoken to her on the phone”) and yes, you would all be correct. It never occurred to me not trust her. I was not out to find another partner, it never crossed our minds. We didn’t share intimate feelings for each other, we was just good friends sharing our problems. Anyway, she reacted very weirdly to that question and started asking why, why, why. So (meaning it as a joke) said “well for all I know you could be a bloke”.
At that point she turned round said, “well actually, I am a man, and your about to fly all the way over here to see me ha ha ha”