Dear Lauren,
I wonder if you still read this blog - if you still wonder about Steve? Or if he was just a quickly passing phase, someone who came into your life and went out of it without ruffling the surface of your emotions?
He had me read all of your texts, and so I incline to the first. I sensed the quiet desperation hiding beneath the falsely upbeat little messages - because I've been there too. How quickly you went from the sure-footed 'sex with you is sooo good - I want it now!' to the hesitant stumbling of 'I didn't mean to be a stalker, I just wanted to hear your voice before I went to sleep'. How I laughed when I read it. You'd had the front to text him and call him whenever you felt like it, and you'd assumed he'd always answer. You had the hubris to text MY boyfriend whenever you wanted, even though you knew he had a girlfriend, even though you knew he hadn't told me about you. Funny that in the end I should be your nemesis - the older woman you must have held in such contempt. You'll know by now that the night of your stalking was the night we began to get back together. You'll understand by now why things were never the same between you after that night. I hope it made you tense and worried.
For the one thing that still pisses me off about all this is that you haven't had the guts to speak to me. Purely because I'd like to know the truth. I know his version and I know it is probably at least partially lies, even if only to spare my feelings. You, at least, were serious - otherwise why carry on seeing him when his state that Saturday (the one when you went to Newcastle) proved that all I'd said was true? Of all the things I may be, I'm not a liar.
I do apologise for not telling you the whole truth that night when you phoned. But I'd made him a promise, and I didn't know at that point that he would ever act on his feelings for me. I thought that letting him go was for the best. You already knew he was a liar anyway, so it was up to you what to believe. But I know how much he makes you want to believe him.
I was surprised at what you looked like. He likes unusual girls and you aren't are you? I wonder what he saw in you, and he won't tell me. He says you were just there. I don't believe him. He says he always admitted to you that he still loved me. I don't believe him. He says he never said he'd move away from the Lakes with you. I don't believe him.
However much you loved him, you'll be pretty much over him by now. That makes me angry, because you are still the elephant in my living room, the spectre at my feast. He can say the whole thing made him realise how much he loves me, and how no one else can come anywhere close to me even when he wishes they could, but all I can think is that he's probably said similar things to you. When we make love, I sometimes find myself wondering what it was like between the two of you. When we're out drinking and having a laugh, a thought will flash in my head that he might have had good times with you, that you might have been as entertaining as me (difficult as that is to imagine!).
I hope you were confused and upset when you got back to the Lakes and he wasn't around, because I was confused and upset when he used to ignore my calls when he was with you, before I knew. I hope it hurt when you found out he'd left you, because it sure as hell hurt when I finally found out he'd been cheating. And I hope you cried buckets when he told you he was back with me, because I am still crying whenever I think about how he wrecked what we had for a stupid fling with a little girl who thinks that being handed an opportunity on a plate by her family is 'having my own business'. *I* have my own business - one I've built up from scratch by hard slog over many years. I have my own relationship too, and I wish you'd kept well out of it.
Please feel free to answer this if you dare: you've spoken to me, you know how I'm not whatever he described me as, and you know I don't wish you ill - rationally I know if it hadn't been you it could have been someone else, some other time. I'd like to compare notes. I'd like closure, and I don't have your blog to read, like you had mine. I'd like the truth.
With best wishes,
K
