We’d just had a meal and because she had work the next day, we got a taxi back to her place.

I’d been reading signals for the past three days and I was convinced I was right. Sure, there were other signals that should have cancelled out any doubt in my mind and for the most part, I was absolutely certain that this would work. For the other parts though, I couldn’t see how I was wrong. Surely I wasn’t good enough. Surely we were just too different. Surely the two different worlds we were from would constantly drive a wedge between us.

In the taxi from the restaurant, I sat silently. Mulling everything over in my mind. Did I really want to do this? Would she care? Would she be devastated? Was I jumping the gun? May be I misread the signs!

I don’t know if she picked up on my internal turmoil or not. I think she may have because she didn’t interrupt my quiet reflection.

Then, the taxi stopped. I went in with her to make sure she was ok.

Once inside, I did it. I crushed her hopes and dreams.

She gave me the opportunity to see how stupid I was but I didn’t take it. I remember stopping in my head for a minute to recap on what I was doing but I’d committed to this action and my stupid stubbornness made me charge on. Even while I was explaining my self I knew I was making the wrong decision. But still, I continued and still I watched while I crushed the person in front of me who for so long meant and continued to mean so much to me.

What probably only lasted a moment felt like an eternity. It really compounded the lesson, what takes years to build can be destroyed in seconds.

Even as I walked away, down the single flight of stairs that led to the door, things around me seemed in slow motion even though I was practically at a sprint.

I got into the taxi to take the trip home. I remember feeling enraged at my self for doing something so stupid. About half way there, the taxi driver attempted to start a conversation. I almost told him to shut up because I was so angry.

I got home to an empty room. My rage still boiling out of control. My knees shook with the adrenalin that seemed to be shooting through me. It took an age for me to finally calm down. It took a few calls to a few people to really make me see how stupid I was. One person bet the crap out of me over the phone and the other tried to sympathise. Actually, the sympathy made me feel even worse! I wanted to be told how stupid I was. I needed a way of fixing what I’d stupidly broken.

I don’t really know how I came to the decision, but I ended up back at her place. Knowing that I’d no chance of rebuilding what I’d just destroyed but hoping against hope anyway, I begged and pleaded for her to forgive my stupidity. Utterly unsuccessful, I left.

I remember standing across the road about fifty meters away for a while thinking about everything that had happened. Its funny how something that seems so justifiable at 4PM can seem like the most stupidest, senseless and unthought out thing you’ve ever thought of by 8PM.

I could have caught a bus back into town but to attempt to clear my head, although I didn’t really even know where I was going, I faced in the direction of town and kept walking. I had no dog at the time so I only had my cane. I walked through quiet roads with no people or cars for a long time that night. Thinking, listening to the rhythmic sound of my cane as it scanned left. Right. Left. Right. Left. right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. It’s strange but I often find that sound very calming. It is a distraction from everything else in my head. It’s almost like listening to a clock in large quiet room.

Again I returned home, but although I should have been tired enough to collapse into unconsciousness I remained awake for hours.

The next day, as arranged, I paid her a visit before work. But still, my hopes that my mistakes from the day before could be forgiven did not happen. Recognising that the hurt I caused was not something I was going to be able to fix, I left.

A lot happened in the next three days. Circumstances at the time meant that I was completely isolated, without anyone to speak to and in an unfamiliar city. I deserved absolutely everything that was thrown at me. I walked for most of the days exploring my environment while failing to remove the thoughts of the Sunday events from my mind. Of course, I probably didn’t try too hard. My thinking was that I deserved to feel so low because of the stupid choices I’d made.

At night, I eat alone and went to bed at a ridiculously early hour.

Although two days is a really short time, when you’re alone, with absolutely no one you know around you at the lowest point that you can remember in your life, it may as well be two years.

To be clear, it wasn’t the first time I had finished things with someone and it wasn’t going to be the last time either. What was different was that it was my own lack of self confidence and my feeble and wildly inaccurate attempt to read signs that actually destroyed something that was great and it was completely my fault.

The last time I saw her was as I was leaving for a bus. If there was ever a gut wrenching, brain frying moment it was then. I won’t go into it too much but although things were very frayed for that entire afternoon, I held out hope for the entire day that I would get to speak to her alone to attempt to smooth things over. But, it wasn’t to be. The moment passed and I was left standing at a bus stop going a completely different direction.

It took about seven or eight hours travelling before I was back in familiar surroundings again. During about six of those hours I wrote, thought and listened. My brain was completely stuck on a loop.

Strangely, during the last bus connection, my mind gradually began snapping out of this repetitive cycle that it had been in for the three days prior. Thoughts that I’d had began to seem less necessary and solutions became more accessible. Not accessible enough to be viable yet but accessible none the less. Does that make sense? It’s not meant to. Nothing made sense at this point.

Should I go further?