OMG Y...!!

A while ago after a few drinks and another hideous argument with the mini-ex (Mr Dark Horse) I decided to do the unthinkable – yes, I took Mad Kate’s advice and joined a dating site.  I always get flashbacks of Carry On Loving or similar, except with a large amount of shame and embarrassment. I hate the idea of internet dating, it just seems wrong and a little bit too much like an emotional CV, but I have absolutely no way of meeting new people.  I do not have a single friend within a hundred miles and none of my friends think their single friends are good enough for me, which, while I appreciate the sentiment, doesn’t help me much. So, I thought what the hell, downed a bottle of wine and wrote my profile.  I figured I’d keep it simple, more due to my lack of sobriety than my intention to meet someone, so I wrote five whole sentences.  I said I’d been focusing on my career for the past few years and when I looked up into the world again I saw everyone had moved on and got married.  I listed my interests as F1, rugby, dancing, reading and the gym and uploaded the only recent photo taken at a school event. 

Surprisingly I got a few hits and not all of them were awful.  Don’t get me know they were far from normal, but not everyone has Psychopath tattooed across their foreheads.  There were the usual topless/pantless idiots who emailed me saying “hi ur fit” or “fancy a chat” – apparently the need for grammar and punctuation is lost on these people.  I also ruled out the married, the short, the unemployed and the downright weird.  I was about to give up when I got a reply from a very sweet looking guy I’d spotted a few days before.

I was drawn to him because of his incredibly beautiful eyes – you may have noticed I’m not a girlie girl and I certainly do not gush over some random man’s eyes – he just made me curious, so I emailed him.  His profile said he was a ‘sex-pest’ and wanting to know what kind of person advertises themselves as such, I asked him.  He was funny and as sweet as his photos would suggest.  We chatted on and off for a while, but I had decided he lived too far away and being a year younger than me, I was sick of dating men who wanted a mother more than a girlfriend, so I pretty much gave up and went to meet someone else.  It wasn’t until a few weeks later I found a message in my inbox asking how my day was.  We began chatting again, but I still had no intention of meeting him, then out of the blue he gave me his mobile number.  We started texting and I started to wonder what he was like in “real life,” he suggested meeting up and I agreed.  Up until the moment I walked in I was ready to write him off as another idiot with a fatal flaw that was soon to become a deal breaker for me. And then I walked in…

The first time I saw him he flashed me the most dazzling smile I’ve ever seen.  Yep, sucked in straight away.  As I turned from the bar and caught another look at him I realised who he had reminded me of – Tom Daley.  The just-legal-muscle-bound-god my colleague and I had been drooling over during the Olympics.  Yep, I was on a date with his better looking older brother (not literally).  I didn’t care if he broke my heart, he was gorgeous.  We chatted like we’d known each other forever; I remember witnessing so many awkward first dates and I started to wonder what other people thought of us, whether they had guessed we were on our first date or if we looked as natural as we felt.  I say “we”, because a few weeks on, we have talked about it and he felt the same.  There were two things that happened that night that made me want to see him again: he asked if I was hungry so we had dinner (I never ever eat on the first date), but I couldn’t decide what so he ordered two mystery meals and I had to wait and see what they were. The other was that he said he was bored during his night shift so he taught himself to palm read.  He took my hand and started to read my palm – this is the line of something and this is the line of something else, they do this and mean this and this is the Retard Line for believing everything I’ve just told you.  I was completely taken aback, how could I fall for such a ridiculous and obvious line?  He flashed me a smile again and that was it, I would have taken him home that second if he’d asked.

We saw each other again two days later and again two days after that and before I knew it I was smitten.  We talked about everything from work to family to bucket lists to ambitions.  We spent hours on the phone and not wanting to drag ourselves away we spent a long time regretting our lack of sleep during working hours – more so him than me!  This was the first time in a long time that someone was genuinely interested in me, he actually wanted me.  And amazingly, not just for my bum (notably my best feature).  One of the conversations we had to have early on was sex.  Our common ground was innuendo and word play and we spent a lot of time challenging each other to the most innocently controversial statements, but there was a serious undertone.  Having gone through a rough time with two exs in quick succession, I did not want to rush into anything.  The other thing was I’ve been having tests to figure out why the last time I had sex hurt so flippin’ much, so having been prodded and poked my medical practitioners across the County for the past three months, I was in no mood to be prodded again!  Turns out we have very similar views: not till the time is right and we’ll know when the time is right by how well we know each other.  Right, awkward conversation out of the way.  Sadly (and a tad ironically), this brought us closer together and all I wanted to do for the next week was take him home.  I only saw him yesterday and already I’m thinking about the next time I’ll see him.

I guess the main reason I’m thinking about him so much is because I’m not doing any of the running, he is.  It’s always me travelling miles on a moment’s notice to pick them up so that they can have a drink or because they need sleep (not that I do as well or anything), but not this time, in fact I feel really bad that he’s the one doing it all.  We will talk about meeting up and then I’ll get a text with a post code and instructions as to appropriate footwear.  Sound controlling? Yep probably, but for some reason I don’t mind, it’s nice having someone else take charge.  I’m so used to being the dominant one n the relationship (not that this is a relationship – we’re still very much in the ‘dating’ stage), it’s nice that I feel comfortable enough to be around someone who takes charge – plus he does this thing when he kisses me really passionately where he has hold of my hair, not in the league of 50 Shades or anything, I’m not that kind of girl, but enough that I know he wants me.  It’s intense and passionate, but not scary in a “if you leave me I’ll kill you” kind of way.  Of course I’m writing this now, who knows what will happen in a few more weeks, if I’ll even get as far as taking him home.

I read an article in a magazine recently and it said how the only thing worse than constantly meeting the wrong man was meeting the right man. I absolutely understand what she means. This is terrifying – what if he is The One?  What if he is the last person I ever have a first date with?  What if he is the one I wake up to for the rest of my life?  What if he is the last person I feel butterflies over?  The last person to see me naked?  The father of my children?  Seriously, this is terrifying!  I really like him, what if he isn’t perfect? What if I meltdown and he can’t handle it? What if he completely breaks my heart? At least when I’m dating idiots with no future I know how it’s going to end – right there and then – but what do I do when I meet someone I don’t want to lose?  The other problem is there is still so much to know about each other.  We seem to agree on a lot of things, but how much can you know until you live/sleep/eat together every day – what if I get completely sucked in, fall in love (for real this time) and then he breaks me? How do I know I’ll survive this one?  Why am I thinking the worst? Because I’m a realist?  Because I’m a cynic?  Because I’ve been so badly burnt in the past I’m a guarded, emotionally defunct idiot?  I don’t know.  Every time I start to over think I stop myself and go for a run – I’m getting really fit!!  I like him, I know that much.  I may be on my way to humiliation, hurt, love, forever. I don’t know. I guess that’s what growing up is – I won’t know until I get there.

Sh*t, that was scary...

I am finally able to write about this because everything in now fine, but a few weeks ago I realised I really had no idea what true fear was.

My beautiful 11 week old nephew had a bit of a rash and a cold. My dutiful sister took him to the GP who said it was a cold and just a standard rash.  After a night of constant crying she phoned NHS direct and they said to go to straight to A&E.  We didn't panic, after all the GP said he was fine.  My brother-in-law stayed at home and entertained the guests from their other child's 2nd birthday party and I took my sister to the hospital with the baby.  It was when the receptionist ran us to the children's ward that my sister fell apart.  She's always been the calm, logical one, she's the one who holds me together, what the hell do I do?  So I said the only thing that came into my head, "don't panic until they give us something to panic about - ok?"  She said ok and we got into the children's ward, then the treatment room, then the isolation room and finally the team of paediatricians.  Being rushed from room to room this quickly was bad, they were about to give us something to panic about.  My sister was terrified and I had no idea what to do, I kept telling her not to panic, not to pre-empt what might happen.  The doctor told us we did the right thing bringing him in and that he was very very poorly.  I kept hold of my sister in one arm and my nephew in the other and kept listening to what the doctor was saying, it wasn't for a few minutes I realised I'd stopped breathing.  My sister went outside to phone her husband and asked me to stay inside while they fitted the cannula and started the antibiotics and fluids.  Having to hold down a tiny baby made me feel two things: admiration for the doctor doing the procedure and total and utter fear.  Fear of not being able to help my sister, fear of losing him and fear of falling apart.

Over the next 48hours we were told to expect the worst.  All the doctor could say was it was an infection and it was serious.  Then we were told it was meningitis.  I went to work during the day and got back to the hospital most evenings to give them a break so they could see their other son.

For a whole week he was in hospital on so many drips, monitors and medication.  The only things that went through my head were the possibility of brain damage, amputations, septicaemia, blindness or being deaf.  It was horrible.  It was terrifying.  It was so many things I cannot even describe.  It was not until it was over that I realised it was shock.  That gut-rentching split-second when you drop a knife in the kitchen and you don't have shoes on - that was the feeling, but constant and it lasted a whole week until he came home.

The short story is that three other babies had presented with the same symptoms that month so the antibiotics they started immediately cured what he had - luckily it was the same infection and the meningitis was viral not bacterial.

It's only now I look back and think "we don't do anything by halves, do we?"  Mum can't have a bladder infection, she has to have cancer, my nephew can't have a tummy bug, he has to have meningitis...  When Mum was diagnosed my brother-in-law told me I was emotionally detached and possibly dead inside.  He was trying to shock me into understanding myself and to realise I was causing more worry by shutting myself down or putting my shields up, as it's now become known.  I have no idea if I did the right thing for my sister that day; I'll ask her in a few years when my nephew is strong, healthy and running around playing rugby with his brother.  I hope I did the right thing, but I have no idea. No one knows how they will react in that situation, I just did what I thought was right and however much my panic bubbled up inside me, I refused to acknowledge it was there.

If you have a baby or a child who is poorly (cold, tummy bug etc) and they develop a rash - TAKE THEM TO HOSPITAL!  My sister caught the virus so early he actually developed the other symptoms (dislike of light, stiff neck, grumpiness) in hospital, which means he always had a fighting chance.  My other sister has had to overcome an incredible guilt; she is a nurse and because the GP said he was fine, she said not to worry. We all have things to feel guilty about: I saw the rash spread to his foot, but it disappeared a few minutes later so I didn't think anything of it.  The paediatrician put the situation into context for us, "had you brought him in last night we would have sent you home and told you to give him calpol, which is what you did, even if we'd kept him in to monitor, we would not have started treating him until now. You couldn't have done anything differently."  She didn't have to say that, so I guess it's true, but it doesn't stop the odd moment of panic when I think of what might have happened...

Look out for these things:
Generally unwell with...

• a rash (even if it disappears under pressure),
• being grumpy, 
• not wanting to be comforted,
• lethargic and very tired but unable to sleep,
• stiffness in neck and joints.

Don't panic, just get them to hospital!