The zebra that ate a bear

Oh my goodness, to say there is never a dull moment is the understatement of the century!
It’s now Wednesday and so much has happened that I feel like I need a quick lie down under a duvet or just need to rock gently in the corner whilst listening to the theme from Watership Down.

After Sunday when I updated last, I went to see my mate who had been unceremoniously dumped by some bloke she’s been seeing for a few weeks. She explained how the turd had dumped her because she was too old! (She’s 35 and he’s 28) He knew full well what her age was when he’d been seeing her and it didn’t seem to bother him when he slept with her so we had a huge “we hate men; they’re all toads” evening of stuffing our faces with Pavlova and pinot grigio and planning our world domination where all men would be banished.

I had a rather random day on Monday at work as I ended up demonstrating how to act like a dancing chimney sweep whilst wearing a pencil skirt which is not the easiest of tasks and demonstrating how to do charcoal drawings of horses. The kids thought mine looked more like a camel though and I almost had to send one little boy out as he just would not stop laughing at my efforts.

I eventually got home exhausted and was going to have a quick bath before trainer boy came to see me. I was just about to de-robe when my dad rocked up to hang my bathroom mirror. I’ve been asking him to do this for weeks and was halfway through removing my clothes when dad burst in with armfuls of screws and drills. He shrieked, I shrieked (he didn’t realise I was in) and the screws were flung to the four corners of the bathroom. As I cleared up after Dad’s metallic hailstorm, I realised I only had 35 minutes before trainer boy arrived and I didn’t really want him to have an impromptu meeting with my dad who is notoriously grumpy when doing DIY. I therefore had to try and juggle the washing up, getting changed, making cups of tea for Dad (who seemed intent on giving me a lengthy lesson on exactly how to drill into grout), selecting something to wear that made me look stunning as well as trying to put away my washing so trainer boy wouldn’t spot my granny pants and greying bras.

By the time I had packed off my dad and hidden the shameful secrets of my knicker drawer and had a wash and change , I was exhausted. However, I was very excited as trainer boy had said he was going to bring over a present he’d bought me when he’d been shopping that day. I knew he’d been to a really nice part of his city to some posh shops as he’d been buying his sister loads of stuff as her baby’s due in a couple of weeks. I was therefore really looking forward to something really pretty and thinking what a lucky girl I was.

Trainer boy turned up bang on time as usual and was his typical lovely self but he had one eye shut the whole time as apparently he had a killer migraine. We were meant to be going to a BBQ at my mate’s house but it looked like he was close to death so I had to call her and cancel. I felt really bad for leaving her in the lurch but there was no way trainer boy was in any fit state. I was a bit worried that he’d actually driven for half an hour to see me with one eye shut but he said he’d been desperate to give me my gift.

By this time I was really excited. He said that he’d seen it and immediately thought of me. Was it jewellery? Was it perfume? A pretty dress? Flowers?
No.
It was bear being eaten by a Zebra……

Well, not exactly.

It was a “tatty bear” from Clinton Cards that was dressed in a babygro style zebra suit complete with stuffed zebra head. The zebra head had a really weird tufty black strip of hair on its head and the foot of the bear had “from me to you” stitched onto it.

Now, I’m not being ungrateful here or anything but I am soooooooo not the cuddly teddy bear type. I have my knackered old childhood bear in my house but the rest of my home is a shrine to all things glam and twinkly. It’s all genuine antique chunky furniture and modern glitzy lighting and funky sofas. There’s not a bit of chintz or childishness anywhere.

I looked at this stuffed bear/zebra with a Mohawk and wondered exactly what I was supposed to say. Trainer boy was grinning like a loon though and kept saying, “I just kept thinking of you when I saw it; how cute is it???!!!!”
I wanted to say that I’d seen roadkill that was more appealing but there was something about the way he was so obviously enamoured by this stuffed hybrid monster that just made me melt. It therefore now has pride of place on my desk at work and although my boss greeted it with, “What the F*ck” is that piece of sh*t??!!” I just proudly declared that trainer boy had bought it for me.

We spent the rest of the evening watching snowy telly (my aerial is knackered so I have a state of the art telly but can only get a weak channel 5) and I cooked a “beige dinner” of chicken dippers and chips – classy!
He explained to me that he was training the solicitor guy first thing in the morning and would ask him a load of questions for me. This was a good thing because suddenly, out of nowhere, supertwat rang.

I decided to have him on speakerphone so that trainer boy could hear everything that was said as I wanted another opinion on whether or not I was imagining supertwat being unreasonable.
I was then on the phone for over an hour with ST telling me how much he missed me, how lonely he was and how he wanted to see me. I asked him over and over if he had spoken to his dad about the legal stuff but he just wouldn’t give me a straight answer. He then went on to say that it had all been really hard for him too. I asked him if that was the sound of a violin I could hear and if it was then I was going to wrench it out of his hands and thwack him over the head with it. He said that he knew things had been tough for me but they had been tough for him too. Trainer boy was aghast at this and couldn’t believe what ST was saying. ST went on to say that it had been so hard for him being on his own and although he didn’t want to get back together he wanted to talk to me all the time.
I told him to sod off and that I didn’t need friends that abandoned me in hospital, deliberately drove away from me on my birthday when I was crying, dumped me and called me an animal in the middle of a panic attack. ST then said that that was just my perception of the situation. I reminded him that these were actual facts and he said that he knew they were facts but that there was more than one way of looking at them.
By this time I was crying with frustration and trainer boy was gesturing for me to get off the phone so I wound the conversation up by saying I would be seeking legal advice on the Tuesday and that I didn’t want to speak to him again.

I got off the phone and was sobbing. Trainer boy was so angry and kept saying, “he’s an idiot; what a complete head wreck. He twists everything you say and he didn’t answer one of your questions. I can see why you get upset when you talk to him”.
I was so pleased that someone else had heard what ST does to me on the phone. The fact that trainer boy has heard what a manipulative toerag he is gave me so much more confidence in myself as ST has this way of making you feel like everything is your fault.

I went to work on Tuesday and sent a text to supertwat telling him that I was in the process of talking to a solicitor. Trainer boy spoke to his solicitor guy and sent me the details after I’d done a hard morning of a fire drill in the rain and singing practice with 250 caterwauling kids murdering “morning has broken”. (Which I am re-naming “my eardrums have broken”)

ST then rang me at work during my non contact time. He kept banging on about how he wanted to be friends and how he didn’t love me at all but wanted to be a part of my life. He also kept trying to persuade me that we didn’t need to involve solicitors and that we could leave everything up to his dad.

Again he avoided every single question about the money issue and wouldn’t stop banging on about “being friends”. I told my parents about it all when I popped round there on my way home from school and they were utterly gobsmacked. I also found out that ST’s been phoning my brother asking if he can go out for a drink with him. Why would my brother want to see than man that landed his sister in hospital? The last time my brother spoke to him was after he had had to break down my front door to get into my house to ring the ambulance. ST had ignored my brother’s calls and turned his phone off after my brother had managed to tell him I was in hospital. The madman now wants to take my lovely brother out for a pint!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, after the stress of two day’s worth of Supertwat, I ended up in the pub again with my mates and was just enjoying another of Captain Pinot’s finest when my phone beeped. It was an unknown number and had a picture of a man wearing a pair of army green briefs and nothing else on it. It was just the torso and pants area so I couldn’t see the face but the body was so minging that my mate spat wine all over my other mate’s crisps.
It truly was the most hideous photo I’ve ever seen and I have absolutely no idea whatsoever who it’s from. It had the message, “What do you think to the meat and two veg?” underneath it aswell which almost made me gag in itself. My mate thought it was so hideous that she made me forward it on to her but she has repeatedly sent it to me since I got the first one just to make me feel sick. I’m now scared to open any messages from her in case it’s the khaki panted stranger!

I fell into bed last night completely shattered from all the stress of the last few days but actually ended up crying myself to sleep. Even though I know that Supertwat really is a complete shithead and that I do actually enjoy my life now more than when I was actually with him, it doesn’t detract from the fact that I keep having to crawl into bed by myself and there’s only me to talk to from when I go to sleep to when I arrive at back at work.

There’s noone to ask how my day went, no one to cuddle or to check for burglars when things go bump in the night. It’s me that has to lock the doors and close the windows and that when I do, it’s a reminder that there was once someone who wanted to do that with me but that they don’t love me anymore.

It’s not so much the loneliness that’s hard as I lived on my own for many years, but the rejection and the humiliation. I cried for hours last night at the fact that my life really has changed in such a short space of time that it’s exhausting and there’s so much still to sort out before I can truly rid myself of supertwat that I feel I have a mountain to climb. Just as well then that I have an army of family and friends to help push me upwards and onwards and a willing personal trainer to ensure that I’m at peak fitness for the climb.
This rocky road is definitely turning a corner but it’s certainly a tiring one, especially when you have to carry a zebra with you!

Catch up soon,

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