"The Relationship Famine"

“I have to go, my girlfriend’s coming over.” I lied. It was one of those lies you know will never come back to haunt you because you lied so you could block the ‘buddy’ who IM-ed you first, who you never talked to in your life before that first “hey” or “how are you?”

Even though it wasn’t true, and I knew it wasn’t true, it felt so good to have that sense of security that relationships bring flash before my eyes in the chat box. I quickly shut down the chat box and blocked the ‘buddy’. But when the chat box disappeared, so did that sense of security that comes with relationships.

Not being in a relationship didn’t bother me until I realised that maybe it’s been too long since my last relationship. Two years, has it really been that long? ‘Maybe I miscounted’ I thought to myself, but I hadn’t, it really had been two years.

Six, maybe seven, months ago, this famine of relationships in my life nearly ended, but it was my fear of commitment that kept it going. Legally known as Anouska, but socially known as Nush. She was a beautiful, olive-skinned, girl who was two years younger than me, but her perfume reeked maturity. We met through Jason, at a fair ground in Durham, a smaller city just outside of Newcastle. We didn’t initially click. I was more interested in her friend Lisa, who was a year older than me. She had long, dark hair and the most striking eyes. She didn’t seem interested so I was keen to play with Nush.

We flirted all afternoon. We exchanged numbers and began sending text messages everyday. A week later, and over one hundred messages sent, Nush phoned. It wasn’t meant to be as serious as she was making it. She made me promise to not answer with a no, and that was when I knew what her question was.

“Noah, will you just promise me you won’t say no?” She sounded as if she was almost crying as she asked me.

“It depends what the question is.” I replied. This went on for a good five minutes; I was trying to stall the situation, even though I knew what was eventually going to come.

“Will you go out with me?” she quickly asked.

I knew what she asked, but I need to validate it, “What did you say?”

“Will you go out with me?” she said, almost as if it were the most shameful thing in the world.

The next thing I did would come to be one of the shittiest things that I may have ever done. I hung up. I don’t know why I did it. I think it may have been because I couldn’t handle letting someone down, face-to-face, or voice-to-voice.

I sent her a text message saying, “Sorry, my battery ran out, I have been meaning to charge this for days. Anyway, I just don’t think it’s a good time to be going out with someone, I mean, I’ve just got out of a serious relationship and all I want is a bit of freedom. Sorry, Noah x”

The truth was that I hadn’t just ended a serious relationship and the one thing I didn’t need was freedom, if anything I was sick of freedom.

Was being so used to freedom holding me back from relationships as I thought they’d take my freedom away? It was an interesting thought.

I, again, needed validation; so I turned to my friend of around four years, Mischa Richards. We first began talking when I found her email address on some pen pal website and we clicked there and then. I ran to her with most of my problems. She is very open about most things and not scared to shy away from her own opinions.

“So how long have you been single for?” I asked her.

“Um…lets see, around nine months maybe,” she replied.

“I’ve been single for nearly two years!” I said, as if it was some sort of contest and I was topping her answer with mine.

“It’s no big deal Noah, some of my friends have never even been in a relationship.”

I suppose that made me feel better, knowing that at least I had some experience to help me in the future.

I wanted to know more about relationships so I asked Milly, she was an old friend of Mischa and so that’s how we met.

“Are you single?” I asked.

“Yeah, since about April, so that’s about, eight months.”

“Oh.”The more and more I enquired, the more and more normal it seemed for people to leave long gaps between relationships, but it still played on my mind that it was two years, which is twenty four months, while these two girls had so far left nine and eight months, retrospectively, between relationships.

That night I could see myself dreaming of being alone forever. Two years turned to three years, three years turned to six years and eventually six years turned to an eternity. I was shit scared of being alone. I longed for that security and warmth relationships provide. So why did I turn Nush down? That still plays on my mind now.

Only a few days ago I received a text message from her, Nush.

“Hey Jason, how are you doing? We haven’t spoke in a while so I thought I would just check up on you. Text me back, Nush x x x”

Jason? She knows I’m not Jason, and we have spoken ‘in a while’, we fucking spoke last week. What kind of game is she playing? Does she know that I’m not Jason and just saying it to piss me off, or, has she genuinely made a mistake? I’ll go with the first, reason being I seldom reply to her text messages, and maybe she is getting pissed off at me ignoring her. Oh well, what is she going to do?