Why the long face?

Good people get cheated, just as good horses get ridden - Chinese Proverb -

Horse and I met on the drive into 6th form college at school. He tried to burn me off in his car at the traffic lights. I was easily impressed, and new to flirting through the means of motors. (as a consequence, I still do enjoy a little light flirting whilst stuck in work traffic...window shopping, almost quite literally, of course).

We were both still students at the single sex schools, however we now had free periods which were spent in either/ors common rooms, and often had mixed lessons if the classes were small enough. Through these means and mutual friends we took our flirting at the lights to flirting over texts (I became more technologically advanced in 6th form you will be pleased to know, even if it was through a nokia 5110) and eventually became quite a serious item. Unfortunately back then you had to assume, and have the awkward chat if you were actually "girlfriend and boyfriend" - facebook was not readily available to announce your relationship status to yourself and the world.

We were together and pretty much inseparable for about three and a half years; we holidayed together, we celebrated 18ths together, we studied together, we went to the same uni together. It was probably at the end of my freshers week in my first year at uni, that I started to think of things a bit more:

1)I had woken up every day of freshers week in my own bed

2)I had woken up every day of freshers week in my own bed, with my own boyfriend

3)I had woken up every day of freshers week, in my own bed, with my own boyfriend, and not been hungover.

Now, I am not saying that this is a bad thing at all, and I am not encouraging everyone that goes to uni to act in any kind of irresponsive manner, but there were a few niggling things that were going on between us and with the above realisation, something needed to be done; I guess now looking back we were both growing up in our own different ways and wanted different things. I was also really fed up of sharing him with his mother - this has since made me vet any future boyfriends to see if they are mummy's boys. He also had really shit shoes. and was too tall. and lanky. and did look a bit like a horse.

I think I made a half hearted attempt at making it work again and again, and I believe that looking back now, his attempt was half hearted too. Our relationship had become very "easy", and when I wanted a bit of security after a mad night out, or just bored and needed attention, I knew that I could quite easily get into his halls and spend the rest of the night with him.

My get out of jail and go card was my overseas placements with uni. It "worked" for a few weeks, then slowly fizzled out. I was on to pastures new. Unfortunately neither of us never changed mobile numbers, and there were several back on, back off moments over the years. It was probably only until about 3 months ago, that I deleted his number.

As much as I knew and know now, that I could never have anything with him again, as so much has gone on over the years, there had until recently, always been something deep inside of me that wondered what if?

So there I was single for the next few years at uni - fun i had, friends i made, men, or rather boys, i met, regrets i laugh at, but if there was one thing I did learn it was to never approach a bull from the front, a horse from the rear or a fool from any direction.