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  1. Liquid Bananas – and other single girl symptoms

    January 17, 2011 by Tinkerbell Jayne

    January: Christmas is over, as are the New Year celebrations.  I’m a few pounds heavier from all the festive food and my skin feels disgusting due to the amount of alcohol I’ve drunk (if you are what you eat, by January 1st I was a cider marinated Turkey with a side dish of Quality Streets). January means going back to work after an amazing and merry time off – back to life, back to reality. For these reasons, it’s easy to understand why the January Blues kick in for so many people.

    But not me! I like January, for me it’s the month for a fresh start, I get to forget about last year’s mistakes and have a brand new beginning; I enjoy making my new year’s resolution(s), making plans for the future and just looking ahead to what the year may bring.

    So I was pretty gutted with my horrific start to 2011.

    On the fifth day of my fresh start I had a date planned. Yay. On the tube to work, I noticed I was a bit sniffley, but I thought nothing of it.  By lunch time I noticed I was sneezing quite a lot, hmmm, probably just allergic to the new perfume I got for Christmas. I refused to be sick, I don’t do Sick Girl. I don’t like taking time off work (and I didn’t want to cancel my date). But by mid-afternoon, I had a temperature, a headache and so much snot streaming out my nose that there was no way that I could go on my date.

    By 7.30pm I was home and in bed. I was officially sick girl.

    The first three days I was suffering from the normal flu symptoms, snotty nose, sore head, aching body and feeling generally run down. But on day four of playing Sick Girl, I awoke with an extremely sore throat and, weirdly, a horrifically sore mouth! I was freezing cold, but sweating buckets. And I remained that way for the next six days. My fresh start was turning out to be not so fresh.

    My six days of being sick with the weird throat/mouth plague were agonising. I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t chew and I could barely swallow. Doctors’ orders were no hot food and no solid food, no tea and no coffee, therefore my diet for the week consisted of Ben & Jerry’s, water and penicillin. At one point I was so desperate for something other than ice cream, and for something healthy, that I liquidised bananas in hope it would turn out as a banana milkshake. Fail. I suppose the first clue to making a milkshake would be to add milk, and then maybe some sugar, but it didn’t even cross my mind. Instead I just had liquid bananas. Eugh.

    I was feeling pretty useless, and moody and when I’m ill, I’m emotional. So along with my illness, came a spell of feeling sorry for myself! I felt lonely, and there was no one to look after me. As much as I like to think of myself as an  independent woman, during my Sick Girl stint, there was nothing I wanted more, than to a seriously hot guy to take care of me (eye candy always soothes the flu!). A nice guy to fetch me a hot water bottle, to change the plague soaked sheets on my bed, and to even liquidise my bananas for me. Or atleast go McDonalds and buy me a proper bannana milkshake. Isn’t that what being in a relationship is all about? Looking after one another – in Sickness and in Health?

    But alas, I had no beautiful man at my bedside, or ugly one for that matter. And I felt pretty crappy about that.I wanted cuddles (although it would have been a struggle to find someone who was willing to cuddle the sweaty, snotty, swollen mess that I was).

    On day five of my weird throat/mouth plague my sister text me to say she would be visiting me that evening and asked if there was anything I needed – anything I wanted, she promised to bring. Wow. How pathetic and over dramatic I was being. Erm, why did I think I needed a boyfriend to look after me? My sister was only down the road, plus I had two perfectly lovely housemates to fetch me things and help me liquidise anything I wanted. And that they did.

    Today is my seventh day on the penicillin and although my mouth is still a little painful, the fever has ended and the sore throat is no more. I can now swallow, chew and talk, and there was no boyfriend of any kind involved in my recovery – just me, my family and my friends. High five for Independent women (and flatmate support).

    Tomorrow is a new day, back to work, back to life, back to reality, and I can continue where I left off with my 2011 fresh start, and I can’t wait :)

    2011 New Year’s Resolutions:

    1)      Be more creative (or just do something!) with my hair

    2)      No liquidising anything … especially bananas

    Tink Jayne x

    [Blog Post dedicated to my two lovely sisters]

    Category Tinkerbell Jayne | Tags: , | 4 Comments

  2. Break up + SmartPhone = Emotional Hell

    December 15, 2010 by Tinkerbell Jayne

    The invention of mobile phones – phenomenal. I often wonder ‘What did we do before mobile phones?’ And a lot of us believe that in today’s modern world we couldn’t live without one. They are amazing.

    Until you’ve been dumped. And then your mobile phone becomes your number one enemy.

    When in you’re a relationship, your phone is that chirpy little device that beeps with joy several times a day to deliver text messages from your chosen one. It’s the tool you use to sometimes say things you couldn’t say face to face, such as ‘i luv u x’; maybe your phones even helped you embrace you’re more adventurous side, such as sexting (I hear it’s quite popular these days), your mobile phone is an important part of your relationship - after all, when two people meet and fancy each other, surely one of the first things they do is swap numbers.

    When you’ve been dumped however, your phone is not so amazing, your phone is the enemy; it becomes your constant reminder that he no longer cares. It’s silent. No Beeps. No Rings. Not one single vibration. And that silence says so much, it says ‘He doesn’t miss you.’

    But that’s not the worst part - mobile phones are Lethal Weapons; weapons of self destruction. Because along with the invention of mobile phones, came the invention of Drunk texting.

    Grim.

    When the ex doesn’t contact you, you tell yourself its fine and that you can live through it. But when your drunk at 3am, crying, and you miss them; your phone – still empty of messages (and love) – is practically begging you to contact your ex. It’s a phone for god sake, it wants to be used, its job is to be a form of communication; if it could speak it would be saying “Use me, please use me – Push my buttons.” And before you know it, you’re typing drunken texts to the ex.

    Or, if you’re like me, and sometimes a drunken text just won’t do it, you drunk-dial instead. Yup, regardless of the time, regardless of the fact that you can’t even speak properly, you make that decision to make an utter fool of yourself call him. Sometimes he’ll answer and you cry down the phone, but most of the time they don’t pick up, because they can guess why your calling. But not to worry, you can humiliate yourself even further by leaving a blubbering, emotional voicemail – something he can play over and over again to remind himself what a loser he used to date.

    All this crazy mobile phone behaviour - Not sexy. Not attractive. And certainly not the way to a man’s heart. When you’re going through a break-up, the phone you once loved ends up making your life miserable – can mobile phones get any more destructive??

    Yes, apparently they can, because some clever arsehole decided to invent smartphones!

    Four days before The Cool Guy dumped me, I bought a BlackBerry. I’ve never really been into smartphones, as long as I could text and call on my phone, I wasn’t too bothered about any must-have features or applications. The Cool Guy was the opposite; he was obsessed with his fancy phone, his could do just about everything (I hope it breaks!) It was constantly in his hand, he never put it down. Slightly annoying yes, but when I lost my brick phone one evening, and needed a replacement, I decided that I would try and be on his level and I so bought myself a brand new CrackBerry. I told the guy in the shop I wanted the works – good camera, internet, Facebook, Twitter, everything my boyfriend had, and so this nice young fella arranged it all for me.

    The first thing I did when it was up and running was download Foursquare, or as I like to call it, StalkSquare – an application that lets you check in anywhere in the world so that people can track your every move and you can track theirs. The Cool Guy was particularly into this application. He checked in everywhere he possibly could so that everyone could see where he was and so that he could collect badges and points (I’m starting to realise that maybe The Cool Guy was not such an appropriate name to give this person, maybe I should have gone with Phone Boy or The Geek).

    My first three days with the CrackBerry where great, I was getting into the whole smartphone thing, especially StalkSquare. Soon I was checking in anywhere I possibly could – from my favourite bars and pubs, to completely uninteresting and pointless places like train stations, and even my own flat (sad). I thought The Cool Guy would be really impressed, and I couldn’t wait to show him my new beloved CrackBerry.

    On the fourth day with my CrackBerry, I was dumped by The Cool Guy. And this is when I realised that Break up + Smart Phone = Emotional Hell.

    I wouldn’t have thought this at the time, but the upside of having a brick average mobile phone, is that when your ex isn’t calling, or isn’t replying to any of your messages, you have the luxury to decide why. You can tell yourself it’s because he’s asleep, or maybe the phone is turned off, or maybe he hasn’t read the messages because he has caught a terrible disease and is bed bound (anything’s better than admitting he just doesn’t care). You can literally chose from one of the hundreds of excuses you’ve stored in your head, as to why he is ignoring you.

    With a smartphone you don’t have this luxury; instead, no matter where you are or what you’re doing, your phone has the the ability to find out exactly where he is and what he is doing. All you have to do is go onto the StalkSquare app on your smartphone, and with the push of a button, you can see where he is.

    Your heart sinks :(

    He is not bed bound, he is not asleep, and his phone is not turned off, because StalkSquare is showing that just ten minutes ago he checked into a bar, a bar that will most likely be full of girls, drunk girls all looking for a gorgeous guy like him to pounce on. You realise he is not sat at home missing you, pining for you, because he’s too busy out on the town having a great time without you.

    So, that would be a good time to turn you’re phone off and lock it in a drawer somewhere for a while. Wouldn’t it? No, of course not, because for some reason us females seem to enjoy torturing ourselves. So we check his twitter, we check his facebook, we look at his photos – we basically drive ourselves crazy analysing every tiny detail of the ex’s online life:

    The_Cool_Guy is hungry – but what does this mean??

    The_Cool_Guy is hanging out with friends – Who is she?? I knew he was seeing someone else!!

    The_Cool_Guy is tired – Why is he so tired eh? What’s he been doing? Or rather, who has been doing??

    The words ‘Sad’ ‘Pathetic’ and ‘Stalker’ spring to mind. And as much as I hate to admit it, when it comes to break-ups I don’t handle them all that well, and I have been that Sad, Pathetic Stalker many many times in the past. I’ve been the girl who used Google translator at 4am on a Tuesday morning to translate something a Spanish girl wrote on my ex-boyfriends facebook wall, and then rang that ex-boyfriend and left him voicemails that sounded like what can only be described as big fat whales communicating under water.

    BUT. Not this time!

    Okay, so I’ll admit, for the first few days of the break-up from The Cool Guy I was constantly checking his twitter and his facebook, and seeing where he’d checked in. But I realised I was only causing myself more emotional drama. He wasn’t going to change his mind, and even if he was, he wasn’t going to channel it through Twitter. The only thing I would get out of Smartphone Stalking him, is upset.

    I had two choices – I could continue to keep looking, keep reading, keep stalking and make myself miserable through no fault of my own. Or I could Delete.

    I chose to delete. I deleted him off FB, Twitter and StalkSquare so that there was no way of me knowing where the hell he was, what he was doing or who he was doing it with. And I was so proud of myself for being strong and doing so. Sometimes I would get anxious, wondering what he was doing, and at times I even regretted blocking him on StalkSquare as it would have been a useful tool to help avoid running into him. But Blocking/Deleting him was definitely the right choice, and I advise anyone else going through a break-up/smartphone situation to do the same. After a few weeks I realised I couldn’t give a toss where he was, what he was doing, or who he was with ;)

    Tink Jayne x

    (Blog Post dedicated to my female work colleauges, for putting up with me, and for sharing their break-up stories with me)

    (… and for confiscating the CrackBerry off me when I was at my lowest)

    Category Break-up's Suck, Tinkerbell Jayne | Tags: , , , , | 6 Comments

  3. WHY DON’T YOU LOVE ME?

    December 14, 2010 by Tinkerbell Jayne

    And so let the crazy mentalist girly rant begin …

    December 2010. Another year is drawing to a close. In just three week’s time it will be 2011, and 2011 marks my ten year anniversary in the dating world.

    I really wish I’d listened to my mother. I was 15 years old when she first tried to convince me to dump my high-school boyfriend because “you have the rest of you’re life to date boys and you’re only young once.” Did I listen? Of course I didn’t –  I was a 15 year old girl, failing miserably at school, and I had found the “love of my life,” of course I knew best.

    Wrong, so very wrong! Now, years later, in my mid-twenties, I’m exhausted. I’ve finally learnt that oh-so important lesson: Mum knows best.

    Because after ten years of dating (and probably wasting my time) I’m still just as confused about boys as I was when I was first dumped by that “love of my life” at 16 years old.  I’ve actually been dumped twice this year! Twice in one year – Yay, go me! Seriously what’s wrong with these men? Or more importantly, what’s wrong with me?

    The first dumpage of 2010 came from my University boyfriend; let’s call him Funny Guy, because his amazing sense of humour is how I came to love him in the first place. Funny Guy and I were together for 18 months during our time at University, and when we broke up in our third year, we managed to remain good friends. For nearly two years we remained ‘just friends’ until one summer’s night in 2009, over several beers and far too many shots of Sambuca, we thought ‘What the hell! Let’s give it another go.’ And so we did.

    It was a lot of fun, I can’t deny that, and we certainly loved each other, but six months in I realised no matter how well two people get on, you cannot force a relationship to work. So for a total of 10 months, we were on, off, up, down, forwards, backwards; we went round and round in circles, and then round one more time. By the April I was exhausted but still trying really hard to make it work, I was determined not to give up, determined to prove that this lovely guy could be my guy. But then Funny Guy delivered the final blow, he sent me a text message telling me I was dumped (yes, that’s right, a text message. Pfft). It was over. Finished.  End of.

    Sigh.

    I was angry and I was upset. But after lots of analysing (and once the two-week vodka hangover had worn off) I began to understand why he had done it. I started to accept that it was for the best, and even though he had been my best-friend and my boyfriend all wrapped into one, he had probably done the right thing by kicking us both off the disastrous relationship merry-go-round that we had been riding for far too long. I think deep down, i was even relieved.  And that was that.

    My second dumpage of 2010 however, was not so simple and straightforward. Because I dated The Cool Guy.

    The Cool Guy was the most beautiful person that I had ever laid eyes on (excluding Ewan McGregor and Robert Pattinson of course). He was annoyingly good-looking, in that annoying cool sort of way. Basically, the complete opposite of me!

    We hit it off on our first date, and just three dates in I was hooked. I couldn’t get enough. I was smitten. And over the course of the summer we spent a lot of time together, and after 3 months of dating, we decided we were an official couple (when I say we decided, I mean I decided, and he sort of went along with it). I was on cloud nine, cloud 99 in fact. I was gushing over him the way an old lady gushes over their Grandchildren, showing his photo to anyone who would pay attention, and finding any excuse to talk about his awesomeness to anyone who would listen. Quite pathetic really.  No, definitely Pathetic. But The Cool Guy assured me he felt the same way and we were spending a lot of time together. ‘Finally’ I started to think to myself ‘After all these knobs I’ve dated, God has sent me a decent man, the ultimate dream guy in fact.’

    So! You can imagine my surprise when just a few weeks down the line (if that, actually) he tells me it’s over.

    It hurt like a bitch.

    I didn’t actually have any sort of reaction in front of The Cool Guy for fear I would cry – and I had never cried in front of him! But I was gutted. And just shocked. He didn’t really give me a particular reason apart from “we’re not compatible” which, honestly, I thought was a load of bollocks.

    I also felt extremely confused as to why it was hurting so much – after all, it had only been a few months! Thinking about it, I barely knew him. I wasn’t in love with him, that’s for sure, but for some unknown reason I was gutted. I couldn’t even be pissed off with him because he hadn’t really done anything wrong – he hadn’t cheated on me, and he hadn’t promised me some sort of future or serious relationship. Yet, I was crushed.

    But most of all, I was frustrated that I was back in that place again. That really depressing place you have to go to when you break-up with someone, where you miss them, you think about them all the time, and you analyse your entire relationship in your head from start to finish. It’s that place where you drive yourself crazy and (in my case) turn into the psycho ex-girlfriend; you spend hours contemplating whether to text or not and then you regret it as soon as you do. Or you search your mind trying to find any tiny excuse to call them, such as “Oh hi, it’s me, just a quick call to let you know I have your pen,” in hope they’ll respond with “Oh, you have my pen? Let’s get back together.” That place I seem to so frequently visit, that place I only left 5 months earlier after Funny Guy, yes, I was back there, again.

    God, maybe I actually enjoy attaching myself to boys who so obviously aren’t into me? I honestly can’t figure it out. But what I do know is, I am going to try my hardest to never end up back in that place ever again. I’m not saying I’m giving up on dating, and I’m not saying I’ll marry the next guy I meet, but I will learn from my mistakes and avoid that place.

    Because at the end of the day, and without sounding too much like a Charlotte York, I do believe my guy is out there, not the ‘right guy’ or the ‘perfect guy’ (I have now learnt there is no such thing), but just my guy!

    Tink Jayne x

    (Blog Post dedicated to Greg Behrendt and Amiira Ruotola-Behrendt)

    Category Break-up's Suck, Tinkerbell Jayne | Tags: , , | 1 Comment

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