Love Story

I don't know when it was I first stumbled across your blog. I know I definitely must've followed the link on your twitter profile, but how I found you in the first place, I have no idea. But fate works in mysterious ways, I suppose. I remember I then visited your blog every day for three months up until the end of August when you betrayed me. It hurts to talk about that, so I will try to focus on the good times we had. I remember it disappointed me that you'd only posted three times that month. It wasn't like you to leave me waiting like that. It wasn't like you to leave me out in the cold, but I guess you must've been busy or something.

In the first post that month you posted three photographs of you in a black & white polka-dot summer dress. It was timestamped 10 August 2012 at 11.43am. In the first photograph, you could see everything from your ankles upwards. For some reason you had cropped it before your feet, but I could see everything else, all the way up your legs to where your thighs met your dress, and then on upwards over the bump of your slightly rounded stomach that I hate to your shiny eyes. They looked right at me. In the second photograph, you were side-on, and there were some wrinkles on the side of your neck where you'd turned round to face the camera and I didn't like them. But I did like the way I could see your bed with its patterned bedsheets in the corner. I could see a copy of Marie Claire and a Cosmopolitan thrown there. You must be a messy person. I know you're a messy person, but it's okay. In the third photograph, you'd just zoomed into the pattern of your dress. It didn't interest me too much, though I knew you'd posted it just so I could imagine touching it, imagine it brushing up against me when we laughed together. Under the photographs was a list of the clothes you were wearing, the place you bought it from and how much it cost. Your dress cost you £45.00 from H&M. I guess I better start saving or something.

The second post came on 23 August 2012 at 4:55pm. It was called Tipping the Velvet. There were two photographs and some text, more this time than before. I looked at the photographs and you looked different to the girl I remembered. In the first photograph you were wearing a velvet dress in a dark midnight purple. It had a lacy collar, over which you'd put a small gold necklace. I didn't think it suited you. It looked like something an old person would wear; a nun. In the second photograph, you had zoomed in on the collar, and were pointing at it with all five fingers of your flat right hand. You were wearing a dark ring that looked like your grandmother's. I bet it was your grandmother's. This photograph didn't interest me much. Both the photographs had been cropped at the waist, so that you couldn't see your legs. All I could see was the neverending dress and a small cheap Ikea lamp in the bottom left-hand corner of the photograph. I couldn't see your white, accommodating thighs. I scrolled down to the text. You said that big things were happening in your life and you wouldn't be able to blog as much. It made me feel sad. It made me feel sad to lose you. I read on and I saw that the dress was vintage and cost you £15 from a clothes fair. By the ring you'd just written priceless with three exclamation marks. The necklace was £55 from Miss Selfridge.

Your next post came on 25 August 2012 at 9:18am. I remember that morning and I remember the initial surprise and elation I felt at work getting a post from you so soon after your last, and so early in the morning. I remember thinking you must've done it especially for me, as I had been feeling under the weather then, and posting so early meant that I could be with you all day. It made me smile. It made me smile because it meant you were starting to take our relationship seriously. How little I knew. How little I knew of the depths of your callousness. The post was one photograph and some text. There was a lot of text. More than I'd seen in all the time I'd been reading your blog, except maybe on your mother's birthday on 21 Jun 2012 at 3:51pm, where you listed all the things you'd done over a long weekend with your parents in Dorset. I remember feeling the post was a little self-indulgent for a style blog, and I remember it because it was one of the posts you do every now and again where you will wear something you know I don't approve of, something that makes men think bad thoughts about you.

But anyway, back to the post. The post of 25 August 2012 at 9:18am. I read it full of expectation. I knew it was going to be a good day, where we'd both be in each other's thoughts, and then you'd let me know you were thinking about me, secretly, by wearing something that you knew meant something to me, like that time on 6 July 2012 at 5:16pm when you wore those pajamas likes the ones that my sister used to wear. How wrong I was. The photograph was confusing. It was a picture of you in a floral playsuit, with plastic accessories. It was a lazy outfit, and you looked tired, but a little suggestive. In it, you were sitting at a table, with a cake on it. The cake was uneaten and had no candles, so it couldn't've been your dad's birthday. I remember flicking straight down to the text, knowing I'd find some reassuring explanation, like the time on 27 July 2012 at 8:34pm, where you'd said you'd been too busy with work and things to post properly.

I didn't. Instead,  you gave me a slap in the face. I didn't believe it at first, but it was unlike you to play such mean jokes. In the text you said that you were engaged - that you had been engaged for two days - and that you were pregnant! I remember feeling immediately ill. I remember scrolling down and looking for the punchline; looking for the list of prices and shops for your slutty playsuit and your tacky jewelry. But it wasn't there; there was nothing else. Just a long explanation about some man called Julian who was suddenly fathering your child and taking my place at our wedding. I was livid. I hated you. I hated all the lies, all the pretense and all the secrecy. It was evil of you. It was evil of you to promise me unbridled access to your life for so long and then take yourself away from me so cruelly; so suddenly. I felt like I didn't know you at all. I felt like all the hours we'd spent together had gone to waste. If only you'd waited. If only you'd waited just a few more months for me to pluck up the courage to comment on one of your posts, or tweet at you rather than just favourite your tweets, then we could have been together. I hate you. I wish you nothing but the worst. I hope Julian dies. I hope the baby ruins you. I hope you get all fat and ruined by the baby. I hope none of your slutty clothes fit you any more. I hope all the late nights that are coming your way make you sag-eyed and tired-out looking. You're lost to me now. I hope you understand what you've lost when you see your daily views counter register increasingly small numbers; when you lose a follower; when you lose me.