It has recently come to my attention that I am nearly 20 years old and I have never had what you would call a serious, functional, normal relationship. It either ends around the 1-month stage, or is a crazy fucked-up version of a 'relationship'.
I seem to get questioned a lot by various people about why I don't have a boyfriend or why I have no luck with men, and I never really know what to say about it. So, I've sat and thought long and hard about why I can't seem to be able to do the normal relationship thing, and the obvious conclusion was that there's something wrong with me. Then I thought hang on a minute, no, I'm lovely. I have to live with me every single day so I know for a fact that I'm perfectly lovely and nothing short of a perfect girlfriend to be honest. The problem is the men I'm attracted to, I'm like a magnet for arseholes and weirdos. During these nosey and often patronising conversations I also came to the scary conclusion that I'm ready to settle down. Don't worry, I'm not talking marriage, kids, mortgage, I'm talking a nice boyfriend. A boyfriend with prospects of being a future-husband, Dilf, and boring car owner. I've been there, done everything and got all of the T-Shirts.
The weird thing is, because I've had a quite a few boyfriends and can be a bit of a flirt, whenever I meet someone they always become paranoid that I'm gonna cheat on them. I've never cheated on anyone. I've had it done to me a lot of times but that's a different story. But, basically, my theory is, a person is more likely to cheat if they've not had a lot of boyfriends and girlfriends before because they think they're missing out on something. And because I know what is out there (a lot of knobheads), if I meet a nice guy then I know there's definitely nobody better who's gonna come along, and I'm really not missing out on anything.
I don't really go on nights out that much and the thought of going out every single week like a lot of people do just scares me. I am officially old. Unfortunately though this prevents me from 'pulling'. Though the only men I meet in nightclubs are drunken, creepy, verging on rapists kinda guys. I find it hard to meet guys at uni because to be quite frank, I always look like shit at uni. Waking up at 6am and attempting to do my make-up on the train isn't the best look for me. And I've tried meeting guys through facebook, they're either not as fit in real-life as they are in their pictures, they turn out to be really short or have a girly voice, or just plain weirdos.
I've always thought to myself 'Rachael, it's ok to be fussy, you're 19 years old, you're funny, you're intelligent and drunk people mistake you for Pixie Lott', but Valentine's Day is always the day where I wish I'd make an exception.
As soon as I walk into Tesco it hits me, an overwhelming sense of nausea as I see the cards, teddies, chocolates, flowers, balloons and wine. The tag line should be 'Valentine's Day - The one day of the year invented to make single people feel like absolute shit'.
I've only actually not been for single for one Valentine's, and that was with the 'most serious relationship' guy. We hadn't been together for very long at the time but this defies the point of what he gave me. I decided to treat him (and myself) to a night of pro-evo, a takeaway, Ben & Jerry's, WKD (yes I went out with a guy who drank alcopops, don't judge) and very skimpy underwear.
He gave me a huge Me to You card, it was lovely :) apart from the fact that inside the first line said - 'To
I also received a present and card off a different guy a year or two later, which was quite sweet. A card with my name spelt wrong and a cuddly gorilla holding a rose. Except the guy in question was someone I'd broken up with a few weeks before because he was still shamelessly obsessed with his ex-girlfriend. So...the gorilla became a cat toy.
Valentine's day itself is just a pointless cliche. But if you spent it like I did last year sat in Pizza Hut (I love Pizza Hut, take note guys) in central London, listening to 'All by myself' and staring at rainy Baker Street like I was in a crap Hugh Grant film then it does kind of hit a nerve.
I also think I'm mentally scarred for life from a primary school incident. I was in year 3, and I was 7. My mum had bought me a card making kit from Avon and I got to work making a valentine's card for the boy in my class that I liked. I thought he was cute because he had big ears like a monkey. I spent a total of 3 hours making this card. It had hand-drawn hearts, crepe paper, feathers, glitter and diamante. And I even put a drumstick lolly inside of it, I was so proud, even signed it 'guess who'. I slipped it into the drawer of the boy in question and waited for him to find it. He had no idea who it was from, up until break time when my 'friend' told him it was from me and I had to endure the humiliation of him going 'eurrrgggghhhh!', pulling it out of his bag and ripping into tiny pieces in front of me. Aaron Taylor, if you're reading this, you owe me shitloads of glitter and glue you heartless prick.
So, as you've probably gathered, I am definitely not a big fan of Valentine's day. But that's not to say that I'm not quite upset at the fact that yet again I'm gonna be spending it alone.
If there's any of you out there that have never seen '500 Days of Summer' then your homework for today is to watch it. That film pretty much sums up my big 'relationship' except I'm Tom and my ex is Summer. And one of my favourite scenes from the film is the one involving the first part of the title of this blog. Enjoy.
So I am now about to venture to Tesco as I need supplies of cat food, ice cream and batteries for my vibrators so wish me luck as I try not to vomit all over the Valentine's displays.
