The Domestic Terrorist - The Ex Files

The Ex Files

I remember when I was younger, just. People say that if you can remember it you weren’t there. But sex isn’t the sixties. The reason I remember so little of being young is because so little of note happened.

Any of the literally handful of women I slept with then would be able to tell you roughly the same. But I haven’t spoken to most of those in over a decade. I occasionally look them up on Friends Reunited to satisfy my curiousity, as everyone does. Type in the name search : find your ex-girlfriends (and the people who used to bully you) and quietly watch their lives unfold. The most anonymous, lazy form of stalking.

Maybe the whole point of Friends Reunited is :

a) to gloat over the people who bullied you and smile at the fact that they are still working in car factories and

b) find out what your ex-girlfriends are up to. And try not to gloat.

c) to try and bed that girl at your school who you always fancied from afar

So I admit, I’m guilty as charged. I’ve done all of those.

Though I don’t have to : I ended up remeeting my very first – and worst – girlfriend at my brothers marriage. Thankfully, she wasn’t marrying him. She only ran off with him when I was seventeen. But it felt good, because, like the Pulp song, Have You Seen Her Lately? A thought came to my mind. And the thought was “Christ, she’s looking rough…”

Now, far be for me to gloat at the misfortune of those who've fucked me over. Anyone whose read other stuff of mien will know that the fact they've lost me out opf their lives is, in my opinion, punishment enough. But it is nice to know when karma runs over their dogma, and what goes around is coming around again.

So what is the point of Friends Reunited? To meet old friends whose numbers you lost when your phone was stolen in 1998? Or is it to watch, voyeuristically, unseen, from a distance your ex-girlfriends as their life slowly falls apart?

There, you silently think. You could have had me, and you did, and it could’ve been wonderful. But every time you said “I love you” it must have been to the household appliances you took with you when you moved out. And now, whilst I know that I would’ve travelled to the end of the earth just to hold your hand, you decided that devotion wasn’t enough, and that you needed more than the everything I had to offer.

And so, on Friends Reunited, I quietly watched as some of my ex’s lives fell apart. As they met doctors that they mistook for great men, as they offered their hearts to men who would treat them far worse than I – and yet somehow I wasn’t good enough – I had a shocking revelation.

Get over it. They’re history. An ancient and boring lesson. Who cares what’s happening in their lives? Their lives are not going to intersect with mine again. If it all goes wrong for them : there’s no point gloating. It already has gone wrong for them in a way.

They made their bed. They lie in it. And I know that they’ve lost something bigger than I did. I only lost a lover. They lost me. They’re the losers.

And whilst this may sound arrogant, it isn’t. Far from it. I know that in my life I’m going to toil to make it beautiful and prosperous. If they don’t want that, then they can choose second-best. I know I’m going to make my life the best it can be. And I can do better than them.

Proof surely lies in the pudding of fact : whilst they chose a life below their abilities, whilst they settle for a dog, a secondhand car, two point four children, unemployment benefit, and living with their mothers in the spare bedroom at thirty trying to eke out a career or life with a man who may beat them, cheat on them, or whatever, that’s their choice. When they left me, that was their choice as well. Let them have it.

So I switched off the PC and went out with my girlfriend. And I realised that it doesn’t matter what my ex’s are up to. I’m happy. They lost me. They chose that. They chose to be losers. Whatever happens in the rest of their lives, I know they lost me, and I know I’m happier without them in my life.

And isn’t that the ultimate victory? They tried to break me. They tried to make me unhappy in their own selfishness. And some of them almost succeeded. Almost. But I’m happier than I’ve ever been. And that’s the victory. So stuff it. They're history : I learnt my lesson. I won't be doomed to repeat it.

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws