A really great guy

I’ve met someone on my course that I really like. I am in my second year and last year I had no idea who he was. He is in my PBL group as well as my hospital group this year so we spend a lot of time together. He has dark brown hair and the most beautiful light green eyes. He is tall and quite thin but not starved looking. He has a really cute sense of humour and is always laughing and telling jokes. He is smart too, which is always a bonus. At hospital, he always knows his stuff and always impresses the doctors with his sense of humour, confidence and eagerness to answer questions. He is also really friendly and looks out for everyone in our study group. When some of us in the group didn’t have enough money for lunch one day, he was quick to pay for everyone and when I was feeling queasy on our first day of hospital cos we were on our feet for hours, he asked if I was okay and looked out for me. When we took a history from our first patient at hospital, I was really nervous and didn’t know quite how to proceed with the physical examination. In my nervous state, my mind went blank and I panicked but he whispered to me that it was okay and guided me through it. He was polite, encouraging and a real gentleman. I felt so much calmer afterwards. He also has a really beautiful smile with a hint of cheekiness that I just find so adorable.

In PBL, everyone in my group is always quick to jump in with their knowledge to show off but he is quiet and listens to everyone and contributes occasionally. Although he knows his stuff and is always prepared, he doesn’t feel the need to dominate or show off and sits back and lets the show offs in the group talk. I like this about him.

When I like someone I like to find out their surname. I dunno why but it’s something I always do as soon as possible and I find that it’s always a good thing if they have a nice surname. His surname is Pears as in like the fruit. It’s just short, sweet and simple. It’s a really nice name. He is also well travelled and knew a lot about my background from my surname. My name is Sri Lankan and often people read it and just assume that because it is ‘strange’ sounding and from the colour of my skin, I must be Indian. But he asked if I was Sri Lankan going by my name and went on to tell me about how he and his family have travelled there before and that his Dad spent a few months working there. He also said that his mum likes to cook Sri Lankan food at home. How amazing is that? I was so impressed and couldn’t help smiling.

On Thursday night, our uni held a medics event where we get to meet the first year mecics. I went along and got to dance with him. It made my night! :D I knew he was going and was looking forward to seeing him there but didn’t think I’d get to dance with him. He’d not really a ladies man and tends to stick with his guy mates who he is comfortable around. I was sooo happy I got to dance with him and couldn’t stop smiling for the rest of the night. One of my closest friends was there too and she was really happy for me. She was used to seeing me really upset and deflated for a while now after my relationship starting deteriorating and then when it ended and she was happy to see that I was happy. I know it may seem so soon to be moving on, but I do need to move forward. I know my relationship is over and that breaks my heart whenever I think about it. Sometimes when I least expect it, I come across something which triggers a memory of us and I find myself bursting into tears. It’s been a month now and I’m sure he will have moved on and forgotten all about me but I can’t help it. So I need to pick myself up and move forward with my life. There’s no point dwelling on the past and making msyelf upset as a result. I need to focus on my future. I have so many good things to focus on. I am getting stuck into the course and my hospital days are great! I learn loads and it really pushes me to my academic limits. I love it and I am also meeting new people which is great!

I don’t know whether anything will happen between us or if we’ll be good friends, because we get on really well, but I’d like to take each day as it comes and find out. I love the feeling when you meet someone you like and when you see them, they brighten up your day you get that warm fuzzy feeling inside and you can't help but blush and smile with happiness :D

Christmas is just around the corner

I know it’s only September but I can’t wait for Christmas. It’s my favourite time of year. Although I’m a Hindu we still celebrate Christmas. I remember the exciting feeling while I was growing up, on the night of Christmas Eve when my parents would send us all up to bed and me and by brother could hardly contain our excitement for Christmas Day. Then we’d wake up on Christmas morning and rush downstairs to see what Santa had left for us. We were always so excited to see all the neatly wrapped assortment of boxes in all shapes and sizes under the tree. We’d rush to wake our parents and later open one at a time, exclaiming in delight at the sheer surprise and happiness at what we got. My parents would always go to great lengths to make each Christmas memorable for us. Thinking back, it’s interesting how we would modify traditions ever so slightly as me and my brother got older but Christmas is still special for me. I love spending that special day with my family, eating lots of mince pies and Christmas pudding with warm custard, huddled up by our open log fire watching Christmas films. My all-time favourite Christmas film has to be Home Alone. I love this! Every year me and my brother would look out for when it was on TV and watch it. They put it on every year and every year we’d watch it. It’s just such a happy family film and the soundtrack is amazing! ‘Rocking around the Christmas tree’ has to be my favourite Christmas song of all time. I love putting this on and dancing round my room as Christmas approached. In the afternoon, we’d all make Christmas dinner together. I’d put on a Christmas playlist of my favourite songs and dance round the house getting everyone in the festive spirit. It really is the best time of year!  I hope that someday when I have my own family I will get to share this experience with my kids and me and my husband can watch their happy excited faces when they open their presents on Christmas morning.

Some of the shops in town have already started selling trees. I can’t wait for when they put up the big tree in town and then the shops will start selling Christmas gift sets and wrapping paper and decorations. Then in the run up to Christmas, town will be packed with excited shoppers wrapped up warm in thick coats and hats rushing to get last minute gifts for loved ones. I love this time of year. The buzz is like none other!

Last year for Christmas me and my flatmates put up a little tree in our kitchen at halls and made Christmas dinner together. We put on Santa hats which had flashing lights and opened a bottle of rosé and cooked a proper meal together. It was so nice. We had a really great evening. It was so special. I had a great evening with two of my closest most special friends. It’s one of those nights that you’ll always remember. I can’t wait to do the same with my new housemates who I am living with this year.

 

 

Home decorating

When you move into a new place, it’s always nice to make it homely so it becomes your own space. When you move in its usually bare, empty and devoid of any personality but as you spend more and more time in it and fill it with your things, it becomes your home and no longer just a house.

I moved into my new house 5 weeks ago. It’s where I live during term time and I’ll be here for a year. I am one of those that spends quite a bit of time in my room. With my course being intensive my head tends to be stuck in a book for most of the day. Many people I know prefer the library but I like being in my room. I like to be surrounded by things which I am familiar with and that makes me feel comfortable. And whenever I am tired or hungry, I can just pop into the kitchen and make a cup of tea or a snack and get back to work. I have so many pictures from previous holidays on my walls which always brightens up my mood as well as pictures of my friends and family and people who are important to me. I also have a few posters too.

I’ve never seen myself as much of an interior designer tbh but I thought I’d try and make a little effort this year in my new house. I share with 2 others and one has lots of nice little ornaments and bits and bobs in her room and I thought I’d try that out. My room at home is a bit more coordinated but has lots of things which I have gotten from my travels so it’s mix of colour and cultures. There’s no consistent colour theme or style. I thought I’d go for a red theme for my room to match my red lamp and poster of Joe hart, who is all kitted out in red. So on Friday I headed to Wilkinson and Home Bargains on a mission to get some things for my room. It was exciting. I felt all grown up. I went around the shop looking at all the pretty ornaments and got some really cute things. Home Bargains and Wilkinson are really good value for money too and as a student, it’s great for some simple home comforts. My parents like shopping for home furnishings at John Lewis. I like John Lewis too and whenever I’m there I always hope that one day I’ll be able to afford to shop there and get my house kitted out in some of their fancy ornate albeit rather overpriced ornaments. I hope to have a clean, tidy home which is all colour and style co-ordinated and mature looking. I have always dreamed of having a plush apartment in the city with a minimalistic modern décor of browns, beiges and whites. But I’d brighten it up with some personal touches like photos, art, a book shelf and maybe also a movie wall with all my favourite DVDs as well as ornaments from different cultures that I'd bring back with me from my travels. I love seeing all the young couples in John Lewis buying things for their home. It makes me smile and hope that one day I’d be doing the same thing maybe going around the store with one of those clicky things picking items for my wedding list.

Here’s what I bought:

 

The vase, flowers and wall art were from Wilkinson. The vase was £3. The Flowers came separately. The white blossoms were £1.25 and the red ones were £1.50. It was cheaper to buy the vase and flowers separately than to buy a vase and flowers combo ornament. I looked at the all the flowers and tried them out to see which ones looked nice together. I thought the white and red flowers worked well together rather than just having flowers in one colour. The cushion was £3.99 from Home Bargains. I liked the pleat detailing. The wall art was £3. That’s such a bargain! It’s a simple generic flower design but I thought it looked pretty. I thought all the colours worked well together and gave my room a little spot of colour. I was so surprised at how cheap the things in Wilkinson and Home Bargains were. The quality isn’t great and they may not have a classy expensive look but it brightens up my room and gives it some much needed colour amongst all the books, clothes and general mess everywhere! :D

Reflection

It’s been 9 days since I ended my relationship. I’ve been getting stuck into my work and making the most of my opportunities. I am living in a new house in my 2^nd year with new flatmates I’ve made some new friends and am starting a new academic year learning lots of new things. This year we are starting our hospital placements too. Each week we have 2 days of placement at a local hospital. I start my placement on Wednesday and am excited to see what the physicians and surgeons have in store for us.

I guess even with all the exciting new things and being busy, sometimes when I am on my own and have time to think, I think about my relationship and am consumed by sadness and regret at what could have been. I know I did everything I could to save our relationship and only then did I end it. I knew I did the right thing and that this was the best outcome in a very bad deteriorating hurtful situation. It was not what I wanted but this outcome was inevitable because we didn’t want the same things.

I guess it’s hard to just forget and move on. I let him into my life; we shared our thoughts, perceptions of the world around us, our dreams and insecurities. He understood me and never have I been so open and comfortable with another person as I was with him. He wasn’t perfect. He had his flaws and insecurities too but I cared for him and loved him and wanted to be with him. I loved spending time with him, learning something new about him each day, falling more and more in love with him. But it was his insecurities that partly led to our relationship breaking down. I guess it’s not healthy thinking about what could’ve been or dwelling on the good times or thinking why did it all go so very wrong? I think of how I felt when we first met and our first two dates and of how we got to know each other slowly over time. The eagerness, the excitement and the prospect of getting to know someone… Not knowing what would happen but excited all the same. Now it’s all gone. It’s just a memory. Now all I have are a few gifts: the empty bottle of the champagne we bought, his bracelet that he gave me, the best of our text messages saved on my phone memory and the photographs. The photographs are the saddest part. Some make me smile, some make me laugh and others make me cry. It was the memories of us at moments in time when it just felt so right. We’d spend hours together in my room and the whole day would pass. Time was irrelevant. It was as though time stood still and we were the only two people in the world. Sometimes when we were together, I’d forget that there was a world outside my room, outside my house. But when he was with me, only he mattered. Only the time we had. Then he would leave and I’d be sad. I had never felt so alive at any other point in my life. I felt content and truly free for the first time in my life. He had this effect on me that was so hard to explain. With his words, his presence and his personality I felt truly happy just being with him. I enjoyed spending time with him and for me I’d be truly happy doing this for the rest of my life. I found someone truly special and he noticed me. I felt for the first time in my life that I wasn’t just a lost soul drifting aimlessly alone. Somebody found me. Somebody cared about me. But I wasn’t enough for him. Maybe I’m just not interesting enough or maybe just boring. He is starting university and he told me he didn’t want a relationship and that he wanted to ‘’see what else was out there’’. He wanted to go casual or be friends or whatever and see what happened. He wanted to explore other possibilities. That truly hurt. It broke my heart.

Writing this brings tears to my eyes and saddens me that I can’t give him what he needs. I put everything I had into our relationship but it just wasn’t reciprocated. What’s the point of trying to make something work when one person doesn’t want it anymore? I have no regrets. I know I've done nothing wrong. He just doesn't want to be with me. I’ve learnt some valuable lessons and that’s something that I can take with me into the future. I decided that it was best we both go our separate ways. and cut contact Having him in my life would only cause more pain and hurt. It upsets me that you make a connection with someone and then that’s it, it’s over and you go your separate ways. Two separate paths meet for a while and then divide, each moving in the opposite direction, leading to different destinations. Never again do these two paths that once shared a common route meet again. I guess I am one of those that lets few people into my life. So when I let someone in, they mean a lot and the thought of losing them scares me.

But they say that when one door closes, another one opens. At the moment I just can’t find the open door. For now I’ll just look out the window until I find the open door.

A new beginning

Saturday 1^st September

It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon. The sun shone bright and the sky was clear blue. But my mood could not have been more different. That day marked the end of my relationship. It was ironic that we came full circle. Our relationship ended exactly 3 months from the day we met. We both wanted very different things. He wanted to explore other possibilities and gain life experience; I wanted a relationship, a future. So it wasn’t meant to be. We were in very different places in our lives despite only being a year apart in age. Despite all the ups and downs I still love him and care for him very deeply, but it was best to go our separate ways and maybe someday our paths may cross but until then I need to look into my future and move forward with my life.

After we ended things, I got the train back from his home town and bought myself a hot chocolate and sat down at the train station. I love the train station. It was a big one with trains departing and arriving from different cities and towns all over the country. I liked to watch people as they dashed to catch the train as it is was just about to leave, affectionate greetings with loved ones, sad goodbyes, confused tourists and as it was a Saturday evening, lots of people dressed for a night. I love to people watch. It’s nice to see a snapshot into someone else’s life and watch the world go by. I sat down on the very same seat where I waited for him on our first date, eagerly waiting, nervous and excited just a mere 3 months ago. I looked behind me with a sad smile remembering how amazing that date was strolling hand in hand by the river getting to know each other with the city lit up around us at dusk. It was perfect. In contrast, I was sad, exhausted, tired and was just about to get ready to head back to my house.

Then I turned around, looked ahead and spotted none other than Arsene Wenger, manager of the arsenal football team casually being directed out of the station. I thought he looked familiar but it took me a few seconds to realise that it really was him. Then I jumped up and ran towards him. I couldn’t believe my eyes; the entire Arsenal football team were walking through the station, dressed in kit, towards an awaiting team bus. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Not being an arsenal fan, I didn’t recognise many of the players but then at the end of the line there was none other than England footballer Theo Walcott, himself. My jaw dropped! I was so shocked. I have never met anyone famous in my life, and here I was within touching distance of a world renowned and respected international footballer. My knees were shaking and I was so stunned! I ran to him and because I didn’t have any paper asked him to sign my arm and then cheekily asked him for a kiss. I don’t know what possessed me to ask this haha. He gave me his cheek and I got to give Theo Walcott himself a kiss on the cheek. And then just as he was about to get onto the bus, I managed to get a photograph with him. I couldn’t believe my luck. I got to kiss a footballer, got an autograph and got a photo with him too! I was so elated. I hadn’t been that happy in a long time! I just couldn’t believe it! I had just seen Theo Walcott!!!! I called home straight away to tell them the news! They were shocked and there were some fans nearby who were jealous and were saying how lucky I was!

Just a couple of hours ago, I was sad and deflated and felt so upset that my relationship was over. And in a second, my mood had changed. I had just met and kissed and gotten a photograph with an England footballer. It was a sign. I know I am superstitious and may just be reading too much into things but it must be a sign. I remember the 2006 World Cup when Theo Walcott was the hope for the England team. He was a young 17 year old forward who had just made his international debut for England. The whole country was watching him and he was the hope. And on a day where I felt like all hope was lost, where I felt that my world was crumbling around me, when I lost a person who had become so very special to me, here was a sign, in my eyes a symbol of hope. I had just met a man whose life was so very different to mine and he was experiencing things which the everyday man could not ever dream about. If you go to any country in the world, maybe where they don’t speak English but where they are passionate about international football and say Theo Walcott, people would know who he was. People would know that name. I can only dream about what that would be like.

Because I believe in God, I think it’s a sign. I think seeing him that day was a symbol of hope, a sign that maybe things may be okay. Maybe the end of my relationship is not the end of the world. Maybe things happen the way they do for a reason.