How It Ended

Written by Emma Kaufmann from Mommy Has A Headache

How must I have looked to you back then, that young girl in black skirt and tights, doing a head stand at your party? Like a spider scrabbling up the wall? What was it about me that made you stare at that flailing girl, causing me to collapse into a heap of drunken laughter?

“You have an unusual approach to social convention,” you said, coming up to me. As I leant backwards against the wall, your gaze pinned me to it.

“Sorry, ah, I seem to have got some foot prints on your wall. I’ll go and clean them off, shall I?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, smiling and causing a huge amount of turbulence to start up in my groin.

Ah yes, those heady early days, when you loved the fact that I had little regard for social niceties. And a few days later, how you adored my unconventionality, when I had sex with you in your front room, even though you had two flat mates who could have burst in at any time. Soon my lack of social graces would become a bone of contention. But that was still in the future. Let’s keep this chronological.

After our front room sex, you enquired, “So, do you want to see me again?”

To which I replied, “I’m not sure. What if you’re a bastard?”

And you said, “I’m not.”

Which was a bit of a lie, as it goes.

For the first few months, I was in control. I was still living with my mum, and would kick you out at four a.m. because she didn’t allow men to stay the night. You seemed to like me treating you mean. At least I think you did. All I know is, you kept coming back.

Our relationship was all about the rows. Drunken rows in London taxis at midnight, always the glow of streetlamps bobbing away while we bared teeth. I’ve since forgotten what we rowed about, but I enjoyed those rows and the make up sex. And of course, the break up sex. And so it went. We’d split and come back together, over and over. Until finally, I was just your bit on the side, while you dated other women. Why did I do it? Why did you do it to me? Why did I let you? Because I couldn’t forget about you, even though I’d tried all the usual ways: sleeping around, not seeing you, pretending I didn’t love you and telling myself I was over you.

It finally ended when I moved to the States to start a new life, a new family. Somehow, the thought of the Atlantic sloshing coldly between us helped loosen the emotional bonds.

But if I hadn’t left England, I can’t imagine that there would ever have been a time when I wouldn’t have longed to bump into you on the street. When I wouldn’t have enquired to mutual friends, “Does anyone still see Daniel? What’s he doing these days?” Can’t imagine a time when I wouldn’t have felt the pulse of you, all mixed up with my blood, coursing through my veins.

Some people say bad relationships are a waste of time, but that’s not the way I feel about you. Looking back on all the rows, the bad words said, that was love, even though we couldn’t show it.

Emma Kaufmann is a British girl who now lives in Baltimore, USA, with her long suffering husband and their two young daughters. When she isn’t writing her blog, Mommy Has A Headache, she daydreams about all things English: Crunchie Bars, pub gardens, corgis, rainy summers and how she could murder a pint.