If I hadn't seen such riches I could live with being poor

(Yes I'm sure I already used that lyric back in the day but it works, ok? Wanna make something of it? DO YOU??)

2010; Fucking horrible bastard that it turned out to be actually started out quite brightly. Again, the devil had to relinquish control of January as first off a fella called Jermaine Beckford scored a goal that meant my beloved Leeds United (who were now languishing in English football's 3rd tier) beat Manchester United 1-0 at Old Trafford, knocking them out of the FA cup. Ha! Following that Natalie ensured that my big 4-0 birthday was one to remember. We had a trip up to Manchester for a night out followed by a little soiree at my place for a small posse of friends. She also bought me a rather lovely electric guitar which to my continued shame remains largely unused. It just looks at me. With her eyes. Anyway so January was cracking.
Now comes the time to delve a little deeper into the details of our relationship, it's frankly bizarre logistics, my inherent uselessness &, of course, the other love of my life; my son.

It would be unfair to say that Natalie & Travis never got on, but there was always something of a friction between them. Genuinely not wanting to sound like a dickhead here but basically they were, no matter how hard I tried, in conflict with each other over my attention. Also, as old school readers may recall, I'm devoted to my son & strongly believe it's my responsibility to play as active a role in his life as I can. This often proved difficult as my duty & my desire to fulfill that duty often meant that Nat & I couldn't be as spontaneous & carefree as we'd like to be. From her side of the issue, it was quite hard as a 25 year old with no ties of her own to take. When the inevitable split came I pointed out to her that he'd been there from the start & she knew what she was getting into. To her credit she admitted that she'd been quite naive about it & thought it "would be like a hobby". Anyway I'm getting ahead of myself.
By now she had gotten herself a really good job in Bedford. She was, quite rightly, keen on doing well in her career & the opportunity was too good to turn down. This meant that that she was working a normal 9-5 Monday to Friday work pattern while I was still working 24 hour shifts including weekends. When factoring that in with my need to see Travis on a regular basis we would sometimes only get to see each other maybe twice a week. This in itself had very contrasting effects on us. While she would spent many nights alone wondering why she had a boyfriend she never saw, I would be frantically trying to juggle the 3 separate demands on my time of Natalie, Travis & work. This led to me being permanently tired &, according to her, under a visible amount of pressure.
Then there was money. Natalie comes from a fairly well off middle class background, had a nice chunk of money in the bank that was bequeathed to her & by now was earning a reasonable salary. Ironically, so was I, for the first time in my life. However once I'd paid my child support for Trav, the ever-increasing cost of petrol to & from Bedford on an almost daily basis & all the other stuff there ended up being quite an imbalance in the amount of disposable income we each had to play with. The obvious solution to this was to live together. That way our combined income with greatly reduced outgoings would put us in a fairly comfortable position. This was supposed to be our goal. We'd spoken about wanting to get married & have children of our own one day. Again I'm sorry to refer to old school readers but they would see how much of an illustration of my love for Natalie that was as I'd previously sworn on all that was holy to me (such as Depeche Mode) that I would never, ever remarry. We couldn't agree on a location though. Bedford wasn't a realistic option for me as it was too far from Trav, especially as he approaches the age where he can come to mine under his own steam when he chooses or needs to (And he will NEED to get away from his mother sometimes!). Likewise, Crapsville would be too far for Natalie to travel to work & too far from her family. Northampton would've been the logical solution but we never got to that.
Speaking of money forces me to admit my lifelong failure to manage the fucking stuff with any degree of success (more of which later) & despite her trying really hard Natalie couldn't ignore that & subsequently came to the conclusion that I would never be able to provide the sort of security that a man should be able to give to his woman. And she was, with a 99% degree of probability, right.

Still we fought on for a while, mainly because despite all the other shit, we still deeply adored each other. Our last great event together came in Street, Somerset as we & my very special friends Rob & Sussann journeyed down there for Phil's 40th birthday shindig. And quite a night it was too. It was a 70's theme fancy dress affair & by crikey we looked spectacular. Natalie looked beautiful & glamorous in a Sharon Stone in Casino kind of get up. Rob looked ace as a punk from '77 & Sussann had a sort of Abba-esque outfit going on. Me? Well first I should let you know that I had been growing my hair over this whole period & by this point I was sporting a pile of long curly locks atop my bonce (a bit like Alan Davies perhaps). So when I tried on my costume in the shop it was perfect. The 4th Doctor (Doctor Who) in full-on Tom Baker mode. I'll put a piccy up sometime if you like. Anyroad, it were a reet cracking night & proved to be the last of Natalie & I's many great nights.

Little over a month later the day came. Now Nat & I never had a cross word during our two years together. And even now I would gladly die to defend her honour. I won't have a bad word said against her. However, the timing of the bombshell was absolutely atrocious. In a nutshell, she basically dumped me the day after Trav's birthday. While she knew I was about to take him to London for his big birthday day out. It's the only thing I'll never forgive her for. I forgive her for leaving me & tearing my world to bits because I understand why she did it, even though I didn't want it obviously. To his eternal credit, my only just 11 year old boyo took it in his stride & was very understanding when I had to explain that I wasn't really in the best of shape to take him to London. It's funny really, ever since that day I'm sure he's been able to see the seismic changes in me but he's never once mentioned her. I dare say, that in his childlike worldview he was quite glad to see the back of her. Whereas I would gladly give up a limb right now just to be able to gaze upon her back.

So that was it. She left. I obviously pleaded, begged & tried to show her that I could see the error of my ways & that I would fix everything. Alas, she was resolute. And so I was truly & utterly heartbroken. I'd felt heartbreak before but never on this level. My world simply collapsed in front of me. And the hardest thing to take was that we had never fallen out of love, I know she still adored me as I did her, even as the death knell was sounding. She had just had the foresight, intelligence & wisdom to foresee what a continued life with me would be like. And despite the heartbreak that caused her, she knew she couldn't live that life.

I don't blame her.



*OH.MY.GOD!*
Having just drunkenly decided to drop in on some old blog friends to alert them to my presence back in the blogosphere, I happened upon a link to this shortlived blog that I'd totally forgotten that I did! I'm currently crying & smiling simultaneously as it totally backs up what I've been banging on about regarding happier times http://theadventuresofagentorange.blogspot.com/