The end where we begin…

Well, it was the end of my first decade in adulthood 2019, at 28 years old and safe to say, it had been anything but dull.

 

After a bottle of Pinot Noir, I thought it might be a good idea to look back over that decade the things we put ourselves through when our lives are falling apart. Hurt people really do hurt people. There I was, sitting on the cold stone kitchen floor of the Windsor house. It wasn’t so much about reviewing the last ten years; it was more about sifting through each interaction that made up my relationship with Alexander. Truthfully, sadly, and even slightly ironically, while others had goals like breaking the glass ceiling, joining Forbes 30 Under 30, or traveling the world, my goal if I’d been honest with myself was only one thing: love.

 

Up until that breaking point the stone floor, the fourth glass, the start of the end I’d exuded false confidence daily, a façade I insisted on showing everyone. A different version of “Theo” always developing, so people would feel some connection, some affinity toward me. But they never really knew me, and I suppose, I didn’t really know myself either. Still, it allowed me to feel… something. A phantom closeness, you could call it. Then, when what felt like my world collapsed around me, there was no falsehood, no version of “Theo” to protect me from my own thoughts. Back against the Aga, glass in hand, reflecting on a relationship… ‘here’s what happened last time…’ with a Sam Smith song playing in the background the war cry of a wounded heart.

 

It wasn’t just a decade of Alexander. 2010, London Southbank University safe to say, it wasn’t for me. Neither was living in London, renting a room, or keeping up with my car finance payments. But, while studying law, I did learn an important lesson: possession is 9/10ths of the law.

 

That was my first loss of the decade. Back to Kent, London’s lights fading into the backdrop, returning to the bar job I thought I’d left behind, swallowing my pride. Still, I picked myself up. Didn’t I? So why, sitting on that kitchen floor, did everything feel so hopeless? Why did it feel like I wouldn’t get back up as if I’d fallen for the last time?

 

Alexander he was the difference. For all the troughs and peaks, the thorns and roses of the last decade, there was always Alexander. Alex. To pick me up again. To tell me everything would be okay. To make sure everything was, in fact, okay. But not this time.