I recently swapped my bustling, idyllic city life for the undulating pastures of North Norfolk. At the time it was a pleasant move and provided a fitting change to a life I felt I was rapidly outgrowing. The reason behind such a decision: I fell in love. As is often the case with young love, the rose-tinted haze falls over the eyes remarkably quickly, and my blissful blindness led me from one life to another in four short months of what felt like pure wedded bliss. Looking back now, I am shocked and appalled at my own profound stupidity.
In hindsight, the decision to up sticks and leave was momentous - I was, after all, a 19-year-old city boy at heart - and one that would have required more thought than I could ever have given at the time. But hindsight is a wonderful thing, as the saying goes. At the time, it seemed utterly unimportant - as weighty a decision as, say, deciding what colour underwear to put on in the morning. I was head over heels in love (looking back I guess the appropriate phrase now would be 'hook, line and sinker') and nothing else seemed to matter. I was untouchable, and together we were indestructible. We were pretty sure that we could handle anything life had to throw at us, and, with the careless frivolity that so often foreshadows tragedy, we took the plunge.
My ex-partner owned his own farming business at the time, a good few miles away from Norwich, where I was studying at the local University. The business was profitable, and he could always afford the finer things life had to offer. He drove a decent sports car, wore 'casual' blazers and had even taken up professional fencing. Such needless extravagance is often typical of the working class male 'done good' looking to break type. Indeed, he'd come from quite a poor family, and had struggled to keep his own business afloat during the recession. Suffice it to say, he took immense pride in being able to pay himself £2000 a month for minimal managerial work - a privilege I was also intensely fond of at the time, and I never turned down any of the particularly expensive gifts he had bought me.
I distinctly remember a second or third date where my friends joined us at a bar in town. At the end of the night, a friend was struggling to find the money to pay for her taxi home. In an earnest display of exuberant generosity (something that would later become a means of compensating wrong-doings as opposed to proving his love and affection) and what seemed like a painfully overwhelming desire to fit in, he came to the rescue and handed her a £50 note. 'Keep the change' he said, smiling that movie star smile. A smile I came to despise.
The carefree way he handled money made him all the more alluring. At the time we met, I was your average poorer-than-poor student. I always made sure I had enough money for food, the bare essentials and a few low-key nights out every month, but other than that I was stone-cold broke. Yet it wasn't so much the larger-than-average size of his wallet, as implied by his continued displays of excess and over-indulgence, that caught my eye. It was the attitude behind the spending, and what that seemed to suggest. An attitude that, at the time, suggested security and stability - that he was confident enough in his own bank balance to keep putting out and providing. In hindsight (there's that word again) I realize that I couldn't have been any further off the mark. He wasn't secure or stable at all; rather, his extravagance pointed to a deep-seated desire to hide behind a self-spun mask of wealth and sophistication. He'd spent his whole life hiding, trying desperately to shed his impoverished roots, and I bought in to the whole ridiculous delusion.
So we moved in together. He had seduced me with promises of designer clothes, luxury hotels, sun-soaked holidays and fast cars. I, in turn, had seduced him with my youthful naivety - an over-enthusiastic keenness to indulge his lies and self-deception.
He first brought it up on a drive to a restaurant in the city somewhere. He'd been walking past an estate agents earlier that day and had seen a perfect little property in the middle of the countryside. Detached, 3 bedrooms (for guests, presumably), and a large, fenced-off garden. Perfection. Of course, being a country boy born-and-bred, the move seemed only natural to him, and the house offered everything he could ever have wanted. It was a mere five minute drive from his parents house, and was very close to his farm. It was enveloped by thick forestry on three sides, and sits in the middle of a Ye Olde Christian village. Initially, I postponed making a decision. A little voice had stirred within me. It was like a nob on the radio turning just a hair to the right, and everything clicked in a little too loud and clear for my liking. There was suddenly an elephant in the room. I remember thinking that I had better concentrate on my degree and my friends first. I also had an exchange year in the States approaching - a subject I had yet to breech with him.
Instead, I just sat there and smiled, like the dutiful, obliging little boyfriend I was, and rapidly changed the subject. A favourite song of mine was on the radio, so I turned the volume up high and blew him a kiss. This seemed to do the trick. He didn't raise the subject again until after he had driven me home. He looked me straight in the eyes and asked me. Did I love him enough to move in with him and start a life of our own? Yes, I said. But I felt duped. Yes, I did love him, but the 'enough' part seemed like a dirty trick. Still, the rose-tinted haze was heavy on the eyes, and I silenced the now screaming voice rattling around inside me, telling me to say no and to concentrate on my life as it had been.
After sleeping on it, and looking at a fair few picture-postcard shots of the village on the internet, I decided to make a go of it after all. I trusted him. I loved him. I wanted to be with him as much as was humanly possible. I convinced myself that it would be no barrier to my education and he had even agreed to drive the 30 minutes to and from the University each day. Naturally, my friends didn't seem overly keen - they asked me endlessly searching questions about my long-term goals, and my year abroad. Needless to say, I'd flushed
that down the pan along with my inhibitions. 'America will always be there, and I could only get a shot at a relationship this once', I thought. I was then asked that most deplorable and banal of questions - where did I see myself in X years time? The question was asked out of concern and curiosity of course, but I felt threatened and scrutinized when all I could do was let out a hapless gasp and run to my room, fighting back bitter tears.
I had recently noticed a gap between me and my friends that was widening every day. They shared totally different interests and values to me, and had all bonded in their concern during my many days and nights spent at his house in the country. When I examine the whole messy affair now, their reaction was to be expected. We had all met in our first year at University, were all doing similar courses, and 75% of us belonged to the LGBT spectrum. We had lots in common, and enjoyed each other's company. But then 'he' had arrived, and had taken me away from them all. I don't know what was more disturbing to them - to think that I had been taken, or that I had left them willingly.
I remember coming home one evening, after an absence of almost a week, and finding them snuggled together in the spare room watching the television. I waved hello and mouthed a rather bashful 'how are you?' and then proceeded in to my room. On the floor, just inside, was a note written in my best friend's handwriting. 'This Month's Bills. You Owe This Much', and then a clumsily-drawn red arrow pointing to a sum of money.
I wasn't precisely sure why this had hurt me so badly. I sat on my bed and fumed for almost half an hour, tempted to crash in to the spare room and wave the note in their faces. 'Couldn't you have called, or waited to speak to me in person?' I wanted to scream in to their faces. The note personified the gap between us, the bridge that was burning, the hole that was getting deeper every day I was absent from the house and from their lives. Our friendship, reduced to a few carelessly-written red scrawls on a piece of scrap paper, shoved under my door, demanding money. Demanding attention.
Was I being punished for alienating them? For finding happiness at last? At the time,
I felt like the alien. From then on, every passing in the hallway or the kitchen was conducted like an awkward dance - one to which I did not know the steps. I would smile, they would smile, we'd jostle from side to side as we awkwardly decided which way to go, and it was over. I would do anything to go back to that time and embrace them one by one (my best friend in particular), ensuring them that my new life still had room for them. I wanted to tell them that I was still the same person. Stupid, yes. Deserter, no. But at the time it made me bitter. I saw the whole debacle as a personal attack, and decided to push our moving in together forward by a month, to escape the silence and emptiness that had grown where warmth and friendship once blossomed. The next time my friends saw me, I was packing up to leave for good, and I was about to become frozen out of time.
PART TWO WILL FOLLOW SHORTLY.