Memories

I hate clichés.

I therefore hate agreeing with any of them, especially when they’re as trite as ‘You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone’.

When Jeff and I split in October 2009, I forced myself to ‘not’ think of all the things we had done together as it just hurt. The longer we were apart, the less it hurt, but knowing that you’re never going to do any of the fun things you did with someone you loved again is not something you’ll get over quickly.

When Jeff and I got back into contact, we spent (and are still spending) a long time talking about what we did in the 3.5 years we were together and some of the memories we had. Surprisingly, it seems that nearly all memories we have are good ones with just a smattering of arguments.

We just did so much ‘stuff’ together. So many mini breaks to the most random of places – sometimes they were posh breaks with 5 star hotels and massively expensive meals, at other times they were travel lodge budget breaks and stopping off at KFC for a bite to eat – the only constant was that we were together and always enjoyed ourselves with doing stupid stuff.

Our two ‘main’ holidays which conjure up a lot of memories for both of us are abroad.  Prague in 2008 was utterly breathtaking and we did so much sightseeing it was unbelievable. We walked everywhere and were completely knackered, yet didn’t seem to mind as we saw so much. Berlin in 2009 was also incredibly fun, however sadly this was tinged with upset due to my job being a constant thorn in my side and the fact I was so exhausted when we went on holiday. Both holidays saw us looking at lots of architecture, reading up on the culture and history of the country and generally trying to ‘experience’ as much as possible – be it eating currywurst , smoking a cigar or trying to say ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’ in the local language.

Other fantastic memories include staying in a travel lodge in Exeter and travelling down to look at the Eden Project and being stunned at the beautiful scenery in Northumberland – Jeff and I went on a boat trip to find Puffins, but sadly they weren’t there. We did, however, find a lot of seals on another small island! We also went to Scotland and stayed in Traquair House which is a wonderful place (Dating back to 1107, Traquair was originally a hunting lodge for the kings and queens of Scotland. Later a refuge for Catholic priests in times of terror the Stuarts of Traquair supported Mary Queen of Scots and the Jacobite cause without counting the cost – according to the website!) and had a mini break to Ipswich, where we found a wonderful Thai restaurant and a gorgeous beach in the sunset. We also travelled to the Lake District and despite it raining nearly all weekend, we still managed to go to a number of National Trust properties and have a nice boat ride on an Ullswater Steam boat.

One year, we decided to go to Center Parcs – Jeff paid for it as a present for my birthday. Sadly it rained all weekend and I remember not being overly happy about cycling to various places in the park, in the rain. Oddly – I’ve got some exceptionally fond memories from that holiday as we managed to entice a very tame duck into our cabin and fed it bread! I also woke up one morning to find Jeff by the window, whispering at me to bring my camera and when I got there, there was a deer standing right outside, just staring at us. I think the thing that topped off the weekend was us both getting massages in the spa and being tucked up under warm blankets, listening to the rain outside whilst being really sleepy. It’s funny as at the time, I don’t think either of us would have rated our holiday as ‘amazing’, but I don’t really remember the bad parts – only the fun we had together when we did falconry or eating random Mexican food.

However, it wasn’t just holidays that we remembered – we did loads and loads of ‘day trips’ to places. We went to the Goodwood festival of speed in 2007 and 2008, visited the New Forest on more than one occasion and popped into a few local pubs to sample their local tipples. We used to cook together as well and both of our main memory is me, burning Jeff’s old work surface as I was stupid enough to put a baking tray on the bottom of the oven and place it straight onto his work surface (Sorry Jeff, you were right about that one – It DID get quite hot!) We went to firework displays every year and went to really enjoyable classical music concerts all over the place.  We had picnics by the river on a sunny day and visited butterfly farms, which had me jumping around all over the place trying to take nice photographs of butterflies.

We ate at so many restaurants – all over the place. Places where you cook your meat on a stone, places where you have raw fish (I adore Japanese food), places where you pick the raw fish you’d like the chef to cook for you... I always enjoyed eating with Jeff as he’d always let me try (read: steal) some of his food so I could see what it was like – One thing that made me smile was our first ‘posh’ meal after a year of not seeing each other and he still offered to give me some of his food to try :-)

I don’t think Jeff and I are planning on redoing all of these things – sometimes it’s best to keep the memories in your head. However, whatever happens and for however long it lasts, I think we’re both really looking forward to 2011 and seeing what new ones we can create together.

- Molly

2010 - A year in review

2010 has been a very interesting year – However to put it into context, you have to also pull in 2009, which was less interesting and far more, well, pants.

The beginning of 2009 saw myself still dating Jeff, still working for my IT Company as a consultant, still working and living away from home and still very unhappy. The end of 2009 (October the 11th at approximately 8:00pm, not that anyone remembers these things) saw Jeff dumping me via phone as he didn’t think it would work anymore and both of us saying goodbye and trying to move on from our 3.5 years together.

Before anyone starts to think badly of him, Jeff did the right thing – I wasn’t a very nice person in 2009 and I certainly didn’t treat him very well. No, I didn’t cheat, nor did I hit him or abuse him – in fact, I was the total opposite, a very cold, emotionless shell of a person – partly due to my job making me so miserable but partly due to the fact that I think I’d started taking him for granted and not realising that it wasn’t just ‘me’ in a relationship, it was an ‘us’ and sadly Jeff didn’t get any love or emotional input from me in a very long time. With a partner like that, how can you blame him for wanting to leave?

Jeff tried desperately to support me for as long as he could and I know how hard it was for him to walk away - It's only when we started talking again, I was able to tell him that I understood entirely why he ended it, even why he dumped me over the phone (would you want to drive 3 hours, have a 10 minute conversation with someone and then drive another 3 hours back home?)

At the beginning of 2010 I realised that I was the only one who could change things.  I changed jobs, moved house, lost a lot of weight and tried to move on with my life. Jeff did a number of similar things as well as meeting and living with his new girlfriend for a few months before the relationship sadly ended. Despite a couple of attempts at the beginning of the year at reconciliation on my part, Jeff couldn’t see a way back and whilst I was suffering from stress with my old job and living over 180 miles away from Jeff for most of the week, I still had enough pride to realise that any begging or pleading to get back together was not the best plan and therefore didn’t contact him again. The last contact we had was on February 17th 2010.

I genuinely didn’t think I would ever hear from Jeff again and as the days turned to weeks and then to months, I stopped thinking about him so often and was able to remember a lot of the crazy-yet-fun things we did together, without welling up or getting a knot in my stomach.

The knot, however, reappeared when on the 22nd November 2010 I got an email from him entitled 'Things..'

I've rewritten the first line to this email about ten times. I'm now bored of deleting it and starting again, so I'm going to pretend I've written it and get on with the rest of the email......

I replied, he replied, I replied.. it was obvious on both sides that we still had feelings for each other and after a few days, we met each other for the first time in over a year.

Now we’re seeing how things go....

One of my (many) regrets from our relationship was that I never took many photographs of us, nor did we document precisely how many crazy, random and fun things we did (and we did a LOT) so, in an effort to make sure we never stop seeing each other again.... This blog has been created to document our time together and detail exactly all the weird stuff we actually do.

-Molly