DAY TWO

Coming to the island was the best thing I could have done at this point. Had I been in Brisbane on a Saturday night, I would of had to go out - I would of had to go out to see Ben, or to trick myself into believing that getting drunk and waking up with a headache tomorrow was going to ease the pain of what was really going on in my life. Realistically all of the above just would of made things worse.

That said, it hasn't been a whole lot easier being on the island... BUT being able to laze around, sun bake, eat fish and chips and have a few sneaky drinks with three girlfriends on a Saturday afternoon sure as hell beats an emotional Saturday night out!!!

I didn't sleep much last night. We went to bed around 11pm , but I was up from about 4am just thinking about everything.

I thought about things I now wish I did differently when I initially wanted to break up with Ben, I thought about why I broke up with him and how I wish I just learned to love his love for me, I thought about how he could of cheated and lied to me so much after everything, I even thought about him with someone else... very disturbing.

My mind ticked over from early morning to mid morning, but my eyes didn't open. I didn't want to have to face the day too soon.

One fantastic thing about getting yourself away with girlfriends when you are going through something like this is that there is always a distraction of some sort. It also helps that you don't want to be a Debbie Downer like Carrie when Big left her at the alter - you HAVE TO put on a brave face and deal with the day eventually.

I'd be lying if I said there weren't times during the day where I just wished I was at home in bed crying and eating chocolate, but my God that would be much more depressing than this!!

I am going to make it a goal that everyday I will learn something new from this awful experience, after all I deserve something out of all of this!

Today I learned that no matter how hard it is to pull yourself off that couch, or how expensive it might be to getaway with your friends for a night, you need to seclude yourself with friends, movies, activities, whatever!! Just do some things you enjoy, even if you aren't enjoying them at the time, because chances are He is living his regular life without you...

...and by the way - you DO deserve that big chocolate thick shake you had with lunch!

See you on day three! xx

DAY ONE

Day one of the detox process was never going to be easy. To ween yourself off something/ someone that you have been with for everyday for the last 18 months is not exactly fun, so to say I was dreading waking up in an understatement.

I slept for an hour at a time last night, waking up at the same time EVERY hour thinking I was having a nightmare, but quickly realising that was my reality. I wondered what went wrong, what I could have changed, how you could be such an arsehole and how on earth I was going to get through not contacting you from here on in.

Once it was time to wake up and face the day, I forced myself out of bed and thought to myself 'life has got to go on.' I forced myself to get ready for work, but when push came to shove, I could barely think straight let alone stop the tears from strolling down my face.

Thankfully I have a great Mum who comforted me and wasted no time in calling me in sick and talking me through the situation - You forget that your parents were once your age, making the same mistakes, dealing with the same issues and being comforted by their own parents. It's easy to forget that people deal with this shit all the time - I'm sure a million women/ men are going through the same things as me right now.

In the hard times, there are no people more important than your friends - your real ones show their true colours and step up to the plate in ways you can never imagine. I am lucky to have a very strong group of girlfriends, who are flawed by everything that has happened to me and who struggle to see me go through this, but are here 110 per cent - no matter what.

I headed straight to Harriet's for a shopping trip with her and Amelia. It was good to get out of the house and start my day doing something distracting. We looked around the city and I tried on some things, had some comfort food and headed home. This wasn't the key to getting me over Ben, but it was the key to making me move on.

Of all weekends, Harriet and Amelia's grandparents were at Macleay Island - a quiet little retirement/ leisure island where there is nothing and no one to distract you and it is pure relaxation. The Healy's have a holiday home there and Harriet suggested that we all join her for a visit - just what I needed!!!! I needed to get out of Brisbane and I am so bloody glad I have.

My phone has been surrendered to my backbone Dollie and my Facebook password is in her possession as well. While some people may see this as extreme, I see this as completely necessary.

We are on the island now and it is very peaceful. I may have too much time to think, but I am lucky to have three girl friends around me, so when I am feeling shit about this whole situation, I only have to look to my left or right for support - amazing.

Day one is almost over and although I can't stop thinking about Ben and about what he is up to without me, I also know already that this is the best thing for me - Ben was a bad egg, in fact I don't even know who that person is anymore... I don't even know how I stayed with a stranger for so long.

Love Lost

This is for all of the ladies out there who think they are alone when they go through a break up... especially their first true love. I am going through the motions right now, and all you can do is keep on going.

Write - it is very powerful.

Sit and write your ex boyfriend/ fiance/ husband a letter and tell them your version of events. DON'T give this to them, but get it out - better out than in as they say! This is probably of no interest to any of you, but as my break up is very fresh so here is mine.

Dear Ben,

I will never understand the events of the last two months. Of course I can see and understand the months prior to that and I felt that they were justified, and, I still treated you with respect and gave you the time of day when you needed it.

I NEVER, EVER intended on hurting you, and up until this moment I thought you were the man/ boy that I would spend the rest of my life with. I saw the wedding, the house, the children, the many happy occasions we would spend together - you used to see them more clearly than I did, but now you don't see them at all.

A month after our initial break up in September, I felt we were finally making some headway in the rebuilding of our relationship - I had not told you this, but in my head and heart I felt it, and I think you are a fool to admit that you didn't too. You wanted us back together and that was made clear from the start.

You then went on an innocent weekend away and BAM! you hook up with another girl.. a friend. I am not by any means intimidated by her, but I am shocked by your actions and it was very difficult for me to deal with this bombshell. I loved you unconditionally and even though it was my decision to break up with you, I knew it would kill you to see me with someone else, so I never went there (still to this day, 5 months on). You had spent four weeks convincing me of your love and willingness to do anything to make it work and ruined it all with a "meaningless kiss," which i speculate to have been more (sex).

I was angry, of course, but I still cared about you, so as soon as you mentioned that your parents were potentially getting a divorce - I was there. Dinner was awkward - I knew something was up. I put it down to the fact tat we hadn't spoken properly in two weeks and that we didn't know how to act around one another. I told you I missed you, and not long after, we were back in the swing of things. There was no denying our love for each other was still very, very strong.

After six weeks of umm'ing and ahh'ing about my feelings for you, and asking myself if we could actually make it work, I decided (in my mind) that we could and was willing to put all the bad things behind us (the break up, the kiss, etc.).

I had my reservations and I am sure you did to, but we had been hanging out for over a month and had only had sex once because I wanted to be certain you weren't going to play up again. We were connecting on both an emotional and intimate level and I was ready to explore both further.

rust was going to be an issue, but I felt like you had really worked on yourself and us and that we finally could give this thing a real go. Of course I hadn't expressed that to you, but I thought it was pretty mutual knowledge, especially once I had decided to sleep with you again. It felt so good to be intimate with you again - I knew I loved you and this just reignited the spark and passion all over again. It's hard to ignore what we have and at a point I thought I was going to cry of overwhelming joy.

Within a minute of this magnetic feeling, and on the verge of telling you how much I love you and how wrong I was to have ever broken up with you, you told me that you had slept with someone else in the time that we weren't speaking. This was shocking, disappointing, disguisting. Not because you had done it (it is in your nature), but because you had kept it from me until we had had sex. I felt like you had kept this from me to get what you wanted and I know you still to this day say that is not true, but these are the facts and they speak for themselves.

I was devastated. Betrayed. Used. Disposable.

Two days on, I was still angry but in love. As soon as I saw that you may be going overseas my heart sank, I was short of breath and I didn't know what to do. I immediately called you a hundred time to no answer. I was so anxious - I didn't want you to leave without knowing that how much I loved you and how much I wanted to put the past in the past.

THANK GOD it was a joke... My anger and disappointment in you was immediately removed. I realised I had to stop playing nasty games and start forgetting and forgiving your past and moving forward.

So now we are at Christmas, a family day, but a day that we spent (in part) together, as well as the night before and the day after. We were back. A beautiful home made dinner with wine and great conversation - hallelujah! I wanted to steal you for a week and stay like this forever - it was amazing.

Unfortunately, what goes up must come down, and on this occasion our happiness was taken all the way down to Melbourne with you and it didn't come back up.

I don't know what actually happened down there, but I know that something down there changed everything. I definitely know you were with other girls, so maybe that was it, or maybe it was my upset phone call... who knows. All I can say for sure is that when you came back you were not the Ben I had dated for 12 months prior - you were awful, unaffectionate and rude, you were the person I have been living with for the last two months.

From this moment for the next two weeks i lived a lie. I tried so hard to be someone you could love, but the fact of the matter was - you were gone.

I look back now and can't believe how much longer things went on for... I don't know why I stuck around, but I did. We eventually decided to stay friends and that I would be here to support you as your friend. Unfortunately this didn't last long - you had immediately started messaging other girls and disrespecting our relationship more than ever.

I decided that we needed to not talk, but that I would see you at a mutual friends party that weekend. I felt awkward arriving at the party because I felt that you wouldn't want me there, but you were warm and tried to talk to me all night, which I found strange and honestly I did not want to get stuck in a corner with you all night talking about feelings.

Things escalated very quickly - i got very drunk and before I knew it, it was definitely home time. As I went to do the right thing and say goodbye to you, I saw that you were with Amy. Ouch! It may have been nothing, but it was right there in front of me.... SO unfair. She ran away and all you could say was "why have you been ignoring me all night?" Maybe it was wrong of me, but I completely broke down and screamed at you... that night was rock bottom.

I didn't sleep that night, I was so embarrassed and could not believe I had let you get me to this point - I was a strong, independent woman and when we broke up I was happy, but there I was publicly humiliating myself and you and not caring who saw me cry.

The next day I went to a mutual friends birthday and you were there - we didn't speak and I felt like you hated me. I got home, took a sleeping pill and didn't sleep.

Thank God for my best friend Lauren who was over before I could tell her the whole story. It is times like this that define your true friends from your acquaintances.

We started a HATE list, we bitched about you, we turned my phone off and I started my new life.

My heart was literally breaking. I didn't think that was a literal feeling. My heart was in my stomach - I was trying to keep busy, but I felt like my world was over. That may sound dramatic, but that's the most simple way to explain it.

After two days I turned my phone on and had a message from you. I decided I needed to take control back and not respond to your dinner date request. I didn't need to see you to be told that you didn't want to be with me.

Over email you insisted that there was a letter and that you thought I really needed to see it. I felt as if you were going to rub it in my face that we were over and that you didn't want to speak to me again. I didn't need or want that in a letter and I couldn't understand why you would want that for me either.

I told you I didn't want to see you or read your letter, but after bumping into you at the gym, you insisted I read it then and there and right in front of your eyes. I was shaking - why did you want to watch me crumble? I felt sick, but I figured I'd have to read it eventually and maybe you needed to explain some of the things in the letter.

The letter was a combination of positives and negatives "you're the last thing I think of before I go to sleep and the first thing I think of when I wake up.... buttttttt..... and on it went"

I had no thoughts on it. This was nothing new to me.

Apparently it was - apparently you wanted us to get back together.

Because of the two days prior, I couldn't give you an answer. I needed to go home and think, so we set a date for Thursday to talk about it further.

After re-reading the letter I picked up on more things you had said and could see what you were trying to say and that you really were asking for me to be your girlfriend, but that you would need me to also be your backbone. This was a task I thought was achievable for both of us. YOU had come to ME - YOU wanted to get back with ME - YOU wrote ME a 'love' letter.

YOU are a good liar.

The next six weeks were horrible. You treated me like a random girl you have sex with from time to time. You didn't tell your friends we were together, you didn't invite me anywhere, you didn't call me on my first day of my new job, you saw me once a week, you didn't tell me you loved me once - you were gone, again.

I guess it was always going to come to a point where your lack of effort and my heartache were going to explode, I just didn't think it would get to the point that it did, not after so long together, not after everything we have been through.

It pains me to go through what happened next, but I guess I can sum it up quite quickly now - you had completely isolated yourself from me and me from your friends. You were leading two lives - one with me and one without me. No one, except me, believed that we were together.

You had told so many people that we weren't together to convince yourself that we weren't and to convince yourself that your next move was acceptable.

You slept with another girl, Amy nonetheless. I guess this was intentional - you had done it before, she knew we were together, but you told her otherwise and she believed you.

I was flawed at your actions. I was more flawed that you were such a coward. After 24 hours without contact you took me to Mt. Coot-tha and told me we needed to break up because of all these things you were struggling with emotionally. You let me sit in the car and beg you not to push away the best thing in your life, the one person who believes in you, the one person that knows you in and out... not once did you tell me you had cheated on me. You let me sit there and cry, and cry and cry.

Again, another sleepless night.

The next morning the bomb was dropped - you told me over the phone what you had done. You were at work, I was at home at 7am. You were on the phone telling me that you had cheated on me after 18 months. You had cheated on me.

I would never excuse that behaviour - ever. I wanted to see you. I wanted you to tell me to my face. I felt you were getting away with it by telling me over the phone. I felt disrespected even more because of how you had done it.

I went to your house that night with no emotion - I didn't cry, I didn't yell. I couldn't smile, I couldn't laugh, I couldn't look at you.

After about 40 minutes of talking to you, the room changed. It sounds strange, but the universe shifted - your eyes were glazed over, you were pale and you finally realised that you weren't just lying to me anymore - you had lied to your friends, your family and ultimately yourself. You were living a lie and I was there telling you EVERYTHING you had lied about and everyone you had lied to and you had nothing. You were pathetic.You hugged me. You couldn't let go. I felt like I knew you again. I didn't excuse your behaviour at all, but something happened - you cared again, you had realised what you had done and it seemed like this was the moment. You told me you loved me and that you were so sorry for the last six week, not just for Amy, but for everything. That was what I needed to hear, but I didn't expect what happened next.

We slept together that night. It was good to be intimate with you again, but I did cry afterward - you didn't see me, but it killed me to think that the night before/ that morning you had slept with someone else in the same bed. Before we went to bed you told me you loved me several times and when you went to work the next morning you did the same. I was so happy to have you back.

We both maintained our busy lives for the next ten days, but we saw each other a few times, went to a festival together, chatted about my concerns and kept in touch everyday over the phone, texts, emails - every means possible. We really were getting back to basics, but it seemed to be working. I guess the key word there is seemed.

ON the Wednesday I told you I was falling more in love with you everyday - I wasn't joking. I had really started to despise you for a bit there, so I felt like we were a young couple just getting through day by day. You completely agreed and proceeded to text me little things throughout the day that was indicative of this.

On the Thursday everything changed - you cancelled on dinner, I ignored you - I was SO disappointed in you. I was so hurt that you couldn't give me one night after having not seen each other for four. I was upset that you weren't man enough to come to my house an dhave dinner with my family, you weren't man enough to face what you had done and you were falling back into your old tricks.After talking about it I decided I would just come to your house - I would let you win again. You then called me back two minutes later and stayed silent. You didn't say anything, maybe you couldn't. I called you back and you proceeded to tell me that you couldn't do this and how it just wasn't working for you - those feelings were gone... OVER THE PHONE. When did you become such a coward?? It's honestly embarrassing!

I'm sure you leave that out when you tell your friends you dumped the ''love of your life."

Of course I wasn't going to leave it at that, so I went to your house and after a panic attack, deliberation and arguing, I realised you weren't ever going to change.

You were changed by me in our relationship and you were changing me outside of it. I would never of stuck by someone who had so blatantly cheated on me before I met you and I won't ever do it again. You said I deserve the person you used to be, not the person you are and I didn't really think about it at the time, but you could not of been more right. You are not someone I look at with admiration or love anymore, in fact I would struggle to look at you full stop.

As much as I will miss your company, I won't miss the person you are now. When I left your home that night I didn't shed one tear, not one. I spoke to a girlfriend and went to sleep.

Lauren

"No one said it wouldn't be hard, but they did say it would be worth it."

Out with the old, in with the new!!

It's been quite some time since I last sat down to blog my life away... Funnily enough, I started this blog to scribe what I had on paper and put it out on the world wide web for everyone to enjoy. I soon found that detailing a 30+ day trip all over again was going to be a little more fiddly and tedious than first expected.

So it's time to start a fresh and move on from the amazing adventures in Europe and talk about getting back to reality... boo! Reality can be a very harsh thing, and after a holiday it hits you.. hard! I went from being free of responsibilities (except for my passport) and soaking up the summer sun in the Greek Islands, to forgetting that any of that had even happened and being thrust right back into life. Uni, work, friendships, relationships - life.

This is not to suggest that I have a bad life in any way, shape or form, in fact I live a pretty blessed life - an amazing family, fabulous friends, a great job and the ability to pick and choose what I want to do with my spare time.. but that doesn't stop the bumps along the way.

Upon arrival in Brisbane I started the interning process - something I'd been saying I would do for a long time, but used overseas as a great excuse not to work for free. I started at a television company for one week and then moved into PR, which is where I now, 6 months on, work part-time and thank God that I finally found a career that fits with me.

I also turned 21 in September of 2010, which was an exciting event, although it came and went as quickly as every other birthday, just with a much bigger party and an overload of expensive gifts - I was very spoilt.

Not long after this, my European travel partner and I decided to call it quits after what can only be described as an amazing 11 months together.. looking back now it was not breaking up, but giving up... and it is a fine line between the two. There is alot more to this story and it will be continued in blogs that follow...

Christmas and New Years then passed without too much drama outside of my broken down relationship and then 2011 was upon me! I feel that this is the year to take on the world - new job, new relationship status, new life! woo!