Don't Send Me Smiley Faces

There are times in life when there’s just no avoiding your ex. Times when whether you like it or not and fully made up or in baggy joggers, you are going to bump into them. It’s something I try to side-step like dog poo on the pavement, but sometimes its inevitable, and by inevitable I mean having an ex-boyfriend who goes to your University.

Today was one of those days. I turned up early for my lecture, looked through the glass in the door, and there he was. In the very same room I would be in in twenty minutes time was the very boy, who when I say was part of my worst break-up I've ever had, I am not exaggerating. Think Peter Andre and Katie Price… Minus the kids, plastic surgery and mansion. Okay, maybe that's exaggerating. 

So, like any together-person would, I hid in the toilets. I just couldn’t deal with the polite awkward smile and slow-motion-feel walk-by that would happen when he left the class as I waited to go in. Don’t get me wrong, I think both of us are happily able to talk to each other now and all I want is the best for him, but after spending ten minutes trying to dry my tights with a hair dryer this morning - today just wasn’t the right day.

There have been many times that I have run into exes. There just seems to be someone out there making sure that somebody who broke my heart is in the same postcode as I am. It’s really starting to affect the guys I let myself (catastrophically) flirt with. He lives around the corner, then NO. He occasionally goes shopping in Zara, then NO. He catches trains, then NO. He’s currently serving in Afghanistan and his family live in Devon, okay, maybe.

You see, Lifeguard Boy is evidence of why you should never start seeing someone who works at your gym. Its inescapable that he is going to see you red-faced and running like a lunatic trying to burn off that KFC bargain bucket you ate all to yourself. And he will see you almost falling into the pool because you were trying to make sure you didn’t make any eye contact with him. Not that these things have ever happened to me.

The first time I saw Australia Boy again (when he was no longer Australia Boy) was my birthday and I was in a seedy nightclub back home. I was queuing for the bar with my friend and all of a sudden he was just there, right next to me. I couldn’t seem to string any kind of eloquent sentence together. All I was after was Vodka and Coke not a heart-breaking trip down memory lane. Even when he’s not in the area he seems to pop up out of the blue. Yesterday I had an interview and whilst I was on the train he thought it a good idea to send me a smiley face. Just a smiley face. Who does he think he is sending me a smiley face?!

One of the good things (if there is anything good) about Chef Boy is that I haven’t seen him since he broke up with me… on Valentines Day. The only guy that has ever done the dumping, and it was on Valentines Day. So it’s probably for the best that I never see him again to be honest. He moved back to home to be with his ex-girlfriend who he obviously liked bumping into.

Yet, there is something worse than bumping into your ex, and that is bumping into your exes Mum.

Two weeks ago I was happily sale shopping in a department store when I heard a familiar voice. Did you ever have a really strict teacher when you were younger whose voice you can still hear in your head telling you that “NO, YOU CANNOT GO TO THE TOILET. YOU SHOULD HAVE GONE AT BREAKTIME”? Well, it was like that. I looked up and I saw her and all I could think to do was run. I’ve written about her before and how horrible she was to me, so seeing her was worse than all my exes just being sat around in a circle watching me have my teeth pulled out with no anaesthetic.

I ran round the corner and told my Mum that this woman who’d made me cry on several occasions had been stood less than a metre away from me. Well, my Mum has her own similar opinions on this woman so we scuttled away to the shoe section. I think the worst thing was, was that this woman still made me scared to this day. It has been four years since I was with her son and she still made me anxious and shaky.

Half an hour later and we went to the coffee shop and I sorted out the drinks as my Mum sat down. And then SHE came round the corner. It was one of the worst moments of my adult life. There was no one else waiting in the queue behind me so there she was, standing so close I could hear her breathing. I ordered and tried my best to not look directly at her and pretend I was a complete stranger. Just as I picked up my tray, she uttered the words I had been dreading: “Oh Alice, how are you?”

I can’t really remember what happened next, apart from my Mum telling me that from afar I looked like I had been very polite. You know when something really scary happens and your brain seems to just wipe out your memories of it? I sat down with my tray and saw that I’d got a nervous rash on my chest. My body was quite literally petrified of this woman.

I think if my Mum hadn’t got a bad back she’d have stormed on over there.

Well today my attempted avoidance of my ex didn’t work. There’s only so long you can stand in the toilets without looking like a creep. I left thinking they’d have probably gone by then but they hadn’t, and as I arrived outside trying to zip up my faulty bag he walked past, and I didn’t have time to muster up the nerve to look up and smile. After finally having the courage to tell the worst woman I’ve ever met that I’m actually doing quite well for myself now, I didn’t even have the audacity to put together “Hi, you alright?”. I looked like an immature little girl.

It’s something I’m trying to work on.

Live. Laugh. Love.

"Sometimes it's hard to walk in a single girl's shoes, that's why we need really special ones now and then to make the walk a little more fun" - Carrie Bradshaw

Within the Broadcast Journalism course that I do at University, we have something called a Newsday. It basically gives us the chance to run round like headless chickens in our newsroom for one day a week providing radio news bulletins on the hour every hour. It can be incredibly demanding and stressful but also rewarding and I can safely say they are the best part of my week.

I worked 3 jobs over the summer holidays and spent most of my wages on smart dresses, trousers, tops, skirts and shoes to wear for these Newsday’s. We are encouraged to perform in a way that we would in a real newsroom, so being relatively smartly dressed is something that they ask.

Now, as I bought some pretty beautiful shoes with my hard earned wages, I feel they all deserve regular outings, and totter out of my flat in a selected pair in the assorted range of 4 inch heels every week – and always live to regret it. By the end of the day, I am not thinking about my feedback, the diaries I need to log when I get home or the food that I desperately need to eat. No. I am thinking about my poor, painful feet.

You see, these heels may make me feel pretty ‘Carrie Bradshaw – here to save the world one outfit and article at a time’, but by around lunchtime, all I want to do is slip my tootsy’s into a fluffy pair of slippers or ballerina flats.

Do I ever learn?

Men may carelessly say that we should “Take them off for a bit!” but any stiletto wearing woman out there knows that putting them back on again is just more painful than before! It’s best to suffer the original pain than endure sore soles and excruciating agony to put them back on again – that’s real stamina guys!

I can see from my disfigured feet that flat’s, well; they would be the more sensible option. Comfortable, less of a tripping hazard, time saving and sturdy (if you ever need to run after an interviewee down the road), but to me they just don’t have the same appeal. You don’t ever hear someone say “Ooh look at her plain black ballerina flat shoes, aren’t they gorgeous?”

On an everyday basis, I don’t like anything more than slipping my feet into a nice sweet pair of flats, but why order a Steak and Chips and then pass on the onion rings?

If you’re going to do something, do it properly. Don’t be half-arsed about it.

I will get to my point eventually.

What started this was when I started thinking about that point after breaking up with someone when you decide whether you can give it another go, or you’re just going to be friends. Whether you should just end the car crash relationship right there or see if there’s still something to hold onto.

Making this decision is like deciding whether to wear heels or flats.

Yes, the flats will be better for you in the long run. You won’t be in pain and it also means you can do so many more things than if you were balanced on 4 inch spikes. However, they just won’t feel as good as a pair of heels; that feeling of sheer happiness, confidence and fabulousness when you slip on a pair of heels. And even though you know it is going to hurt eventually, you still wear them over and over again.

I know from experience. The rush to say “live for the moment” can lead to us getting hurt again and again just because of the short-term aspects. Wearing your heels again and again within short period of time just leads to the heels no longer being bearable at all, yet we do it to ourselves anyway.

It’s the same in life as well, we may decide to play it safe, stay comfortable and protect ourselves from getting hurt or go all out for the sense of sheer happiness without thinking of the inevitable fall from grace. Wearing the flats just isn’t as appealing – is it better to have incredible happiness for moment than never at all?

So, what do you choose?

From this day forward, I will no longer choose heels but will not settle for flats either. I choose to go barefoot.

We can sometime be so busy running around in our heels or flats to really know where we are and what we are doing. We don’t see what we are walking all over never mind feel it. We lose all sensitivity to the world under our feet by disengaging ourselves with pointless things.

Does anybody else love the feel of sand under your feet on the beach when you slip off your shoes for the first time? That’s what I’m going for here. For us all to be a little more grounded, stripped back without the unnecessary. To not worry about the things we can’t control and savour the things that we can.

For there is no better accessory to an outfit than yourself, free of straps that hold you down and pain that you believe is inevitable by letting someone see the real you. You are yourself, and there is no one else quite as brilliant as you.

And no one will ever get you in a 50% off sale.

Live. Laugh. Love

(P.S I won't actually be walking around barefoot, and neither should you... It's cold outside!)