Once upon a time I believed in love

Ten years ago I fell in love for the first, and the last, time.

I used to walk our dog every morning before school. At this point I was going to a crammer in South Kensington since I'd been kicked out of the local high school the year before; I used to get up really early to make sure that Jack got a good run in before I had to leave to catch the train in to Central London. So Jack and I would head up to Richmond Park shortly after sunrise, the best time to be there - so few people around that that the fields belonged to us. It was something I looked forward to, even when it was raining, even when it was freezing cold.

Most mornings I would see the same guy jogging, following a similar route to Jack and I. A few weeks passed, by which time this guy and I had moved on from pretending not to notice each other, to nodding hello, to saying hello. One morning he stopped to catch his breath by the duck pond and Jack bounded over to him and stuck his muzzle in the guy's crotch. It was the perfect introduction.

Sam and I met up for a drink that night. I guess we connected in all the right ways because that night I ended up at his place - we stayed in bed for the next three days and by the time I left his flat I was totally in love with him. Madly in love. Crazy in love. The sort of infatuated headfuck all-encompassing love that it's only possible to feel at the age of seventeen, when tomorrow seems a long time in coming and a year fast forwarded might as well be another lifetime.

Sam and I stayed in our bubble for the next three years.

Sam graduated when I was nineteen, the year after I'd failed my A'Levels for the first time. He got a job and we moved in together, into a flat on the Holloway Road. All I wanted at that point was Sam. He was all I cared about, all I thought about, all I dreamed of. Nothing else mattered. That tiny flat made me feel safer than anything else ever had.

In hindsight, I was blind to anything that didn't fit the blueprint I'd etched out in my mind.

Three years after we met, something clicked out of place. He became distant, angry, irritated, tense, short in words, long in angry glances. He stopped meeting my eyes. He stopped holding my face when he kissed me. He stopped holding me at night in his sleep. Nothing I did made it better. Nothing I did brought Sam back.

I started to feel the cold.

The night everything dissolved, I should have been in Brighton. I was due to go down to visit a friend for the weekend but I cancelled at the last minute. Sam was acting weird and I wanted to be with him, decided that we needed to talk, thought maybe if I could just get him to talk then it would be OK, we could get back to where I wanted to be.

He didn't come home after work and I couldn't raise him on his mobile, but I just figured he was out drinking. So I waited, on the sofa, TV on, bottle of wine. Waited for him to come home. Waited for him to come home in the hope that I would see something in his eyes that I could cling onto, that I could pull that something out of, reignite, make things whole again.

Lying in bed still waiting for Sam to come home. Hear the key in the lock, the sound of stumbling, banging, something being knocked over in the hallway. I smile to myself; Sam's drunk. I get out of bed, stand in the open doorway, wait for Sam to come into the sitting room. He doesn't. I can still hear sounds in the hallway. I am about to step forward, to go see if he's alright. A girl tumbles through the door, laughing, her face turned towards Sam who's right behind her, pressing up against her, he's laughing too, looking at her. And then he puts his hands to her face, holds her face like he used to hold mine, and he kisses her, deeply, like he used to kiss me.

I start to shiver.

I start to feel more sick than I have ever felt.

They must have heard me, must have heard my fucking heart cracking, shattering, falling to the floor in a thousand million tiny pieces, because they turn, look straight at me. Sam's face goes white, mouth slack, still holding on to the girl. Hot red tears spilling up falling splashing down my face and as he meets my gaze all I can see is shock, anger, annoyance, and maybe possibly a hint of shame. All I can see is a black gaping hole where the love used to be.

I won't go into the long and tedious details of the fallout, recriminations, harsh words, spitting out blame like bullets, me moving out, the days weeks months I spent crying under my duvet, walking through the world out of step, a monochrome, joyless, numb fucking existence. I won't go through the details of how I found myself again, reclaimed myself, built myself up again brick by tiny brick, filled out my skin as Sara; Sara-separate-from-Sam. All I will say is that it took me a long time to feel normal again, and once I got back to that state I promised myself that would never never never never happen to me again. I would never allow myself to lose sight of who I am and who I want to be. I would never allow myself to be consumed by someone else, to the point that life wouldn't seem worth living when they decided to walk away.

But I still see his face when I close my eyes. I still sometimes smell him on strange passing skin. And it still makes my heart skip, despite myself, if I see an element of him, a walk, a word, a gesture, a look, in someone else.

That was really hard to write. I'm feeling kind of bummed out. But life goes on.