the motherland: the last episode

It's Sunday morning, the beginning of my last full day in England. I wake up with a stomach ache worse than that time I got so drunk I thought it would be prudent to eat condensed vegetable soup straight from the can. I shudder at the very memory.

I hydrated, took a hot shower and was feeling a little better by the time I needed to head out, and I got a pretty decent train nap on the way in so I was just about human by the time I met up with Ed. I went straight in to campus once I got to Uxbridge and Ed was waiting for me with our mutual friend Pete. (Funny enough, it was Pete's dead celebrities themed birthday party where Ed and I first met, at least officially.) The three of us set off for a nearby pub for a roast lunch.

At this point I need to pause the narrative and let you in on some back story. In case you're not familiar with the tale, Ed and I were together for about a year (both while I was living in London and while I was living in New York) before breaking up in January of 2009. Though our relationship certainly had its share of pain and hurt, we did manage to emerge from it with a commitment to remaining friends, and we'd pretty much been succeeding at it. When I made my plans to come to London I got in touch with him right away to see what kind of time I could get with him.

Of course, it's not quite so simple, because he's got himself a girlfriend.

So, the plan had been that I would come to Uxbridge midday on Sunday, spend the night there and head to the airport on Monday afternoon (Uxbridge is a hop and a skip from Heathrow). In our e-mailing about our plans I asked him more than once if everything would be okay for me to stay, what with him having a girlfriend and her maybe not being 100 percent keen on the ex coming over for dinner and all. But he never rustled a feather at it. Not once. In fact, on one occasion he mentioned some issues he was having with his roommates that might make it awkward for me to stay at his place -- his roommates -- and went so far as to make reference to a previous night we'd spent in a hotel right before I left London and how another night like that would be fun.

Did I mention the girlfriend? Thought so.

Anywho. As far as I knew when I headed to Uxbridge on Sunday, things were copasetic. Turns out? Not so much, children. Not so much.

We get through our entire lunch. We've been at the pub about two and a half hours, eating, chatting, when suddenly Ed says, "Oh, what time is it?" He looks at the time on his phone and simply says, "I'm booked."

I said, "You're booked? Excuse me?"

And frankly I'll spare you the play by play of the rest of the conversation. What you need to know is that he let me drag all my shit out to the edge of town without telling me he had plans (with his girlfriend, shocking) and even had the nerve to say that he didn't find out until he knew I was already on the train and, hey, he didn't want to text me then and have me mad at him the whole way here! Well doesn't that just make so much sense I want to write a book of the new fucking testament about it. Wrong.

So he left. And there I was, stranded, texting Sarah on my almost dead phone, hoping she'd have room for me that night since her flatmates were coming back and hoping she'd even be able to answer me before the phone called it quits and I was TRULY screwed. Luckily, things on my end worked out. I got to spend another two hours or so on public transport, dragging my bags every which way around London -- part of which involved a lovely 30 minutes or so standing out in the frigid, frigid cold waiting for a bus in Uxbridge, thank GOD for Pete who waited with me -- and I hung out for a few hours at Monkey Chews with Sarah until she finished her shift and we shuffled home in the cold.

So instead of reliving some old times, wandering around campus and Uxbridge, giving in to a little nostalgia on my last night in London, I spent the evening curled up in bed watching The Inbetweeners. And then I accidentally slept later than I'd intended so I pretty much headed straight back toward Heathrow after some tea in the morning.

Silver lining? If I gained anything from it, it was final closure. I thought I was going to see an old friend, but obviously I was going to see someone who has a very different perception of our friendship than me. Or perhaps I was the only one who perceived a friendship at all. Not enough backbone to tell the girlfriend he had plans or to tell me he couldn't make good on ours? I'm not sure. A big part of me wonders if he didn't do the entire thing on purpose. And since I've yet to receive any sort of apology from him to this day, I think that's a pretty safe bet. (If you find yourself muttering, "Douchebag!" at this moment, please don't fight it -- from what I can tell through past tellings of this story it is a totally natural reaction.)

It sucked. But I forced myself to pick up and move past it quick so it wouldn't ruin my trip, and trust me, it didn't. Those six days were some of the best of my year. On my flight home, I was planning my trip back.


cheers,
elizabeth