This is an extract from the book I’ve written with @takingthenicki. I hope we’ll have it published at some point soon, but for now I just thought I’d put up one of the chapters. It’s the most personal of them all and quite nerve-racking to share in public. It’s a real account of the devastation a break up can cause and is 100% true so for good or bad, this a window into a little bit of my life and one of the hardest moments I’ve ever had to go through. I hope you like it…

June 2008

…go on save your soul, before it’s too far gone, and before nothing can be done. 

– Robert Pattinson

I was so nervous. I literally couldn’t believe it had come to this. Rachel was gonna be here in a minute and I was so scared that she was just going to walk out of my life forever. I was pacing. Shaking. I’d never felt like this before. I didn’t know how to deal with it. My flatmate and one of my best friends, was in America so I was all alone. I wished he was here. I wondered what he’d say about all this? Probably that I was playing it all wrong. He’d be right. I knew he would be right. So why was I still doing this?

Fuck!

I was literally going crazy. I couldn’t stop analyzing every little thing I’d done and everything I’d said to her. I just couldn’t believe she would actually leave. No matter how bad things had gotten. We were forever. Frustrated tears welled up in my eyes.

God I feel so fucking powerless!

It was the same thought that had been driving me insane for weeks. Ever since I got back from my parent’s place in France with the boys and decided that now was the time to give her the ultimatum. We’d been sleeping with each other again, going on dates…I mean for fucks sake, we had so much going for us! I was best friends with her sister’s boyfriend, like a brother to her sister and her parents loved me. My parents loved her, we had a flat together, not to mention a history! And most importantly we had love! An all-consuming love that was meant to fucking be! I mean love isn’t supposed to be perfect is it? So I’d fucked up for a few months…our love was forever. A love like ours doesn’t come along very often and I just knew that she had to feel that to. On our dates we’d been getting closer and even though she hadn’t said it, I could tell she wanted to be back together with me, it was just a matter of rebuilding our trust. So when I got back from France I told her;

‘I can’t do it like this…I just can’t,’ I paused. ‘I need you in my life, but I can’t do it only having half of you. I want all of you. It’s all or nothing. Either we’re together or we’re not’

‘Then it’s nothing’ she whispered.

I felt like I’d been stabbed in the chest. I’d heard people say that before on TV but I always assumed that it was dramatic license. But it wasn’t. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t comprehend what had just happened. In one sentence my whole world had changed. I didn’t know what to say. It was so alien. Normally I’d argue or just straight up not give a shit. I remember telling my friend once at our friend’s 21st that I was worth too much and had too much going for me to ever let a girl destroy me. I told him that we give girls too much power and that it was bullshit. And now here I was. Feeling like it was the end of all things because of three small words.

‘You can’t…’ I couldn’t find the words. ‘I love you. You love me…we can’t end like this. I don’t get it…things were good before I went away…’

‘I just think…you know that I should be single…I need to experience what that’s like’ she said.

The rest of that conversation is a haze to me. I remember trying to convince her that she was making a mistake. That she would bury me if she did this and that there would be no coming back from this. But nothing I said made any difference. We had spoken a few times in the last week, and now she was coming to take the rest of her stuff from the flat. So I waited for her to come. I had written her a letter laying it all out. I wish I had kept it now to see what it said, but she took it…said it meant a lot to her or some bullshit like that. I know that I poured everything I had into it. Apologies. Declarations. Everything. Maybe I was deluding myself but I was convinced that if she knew, if she really knew, how bad I wanted to make this right, she wouldn’t be able to leave. It was that part of the movie where the couple come back together and despite all the turmoil or whatever the plot twist was, they realise that they are meant to be and it’s happily ever after. Because love doesn’t just disappear over night does it? Not something like what me and Rachel had. All the while I could see both sides of it, like two paths ahead of me. If she comes back then it’s all there for us, marriage, kids…a whole life full of happiness. I’d be a better man this time around. Lesson learnt. All the things she wanted, all the changes she wanted me to make, all the complaining, all the arguing would be a thing of the past. We’d be so much stronger for this, she just had to see it. But then there was the other road. I didn’t even want to look down that one. I’d seen glimpses of it the last week. I thought about how when we first broke up I kind of wished she would find someone to have a fling with so that I didn’t feel so guilty, and all because I was so sure that in the end we would be together; and now all I could think about was how I could possibly have fucked things up this bad.

I was sitting by my bed when I heard keys in the door. Instant adrenaline rush. Normally at big moments in your life you’re not aware of the significance of these moments until after, but I knew. This was going to be life changing. Looking at my life now I wasn’t wrong either. That one moment shaped everything that came after. She came into the bedroom looking so beautiful. Her hair had recently been cut for a model show she was in, but even without her hair long she still looked stunning. 5’8 with one of those figures that girls read about, and yet she was always convinced she was just a plain jane. Part of the allure I suppose. Her face was the first thing I had ever noticed about her. ‘Out of your league hot‘ is what one of my other best friends, Az, had called her. And now here she was again, just across the room, maybe for the last time.  We didn’t hug or anything. I thought about how funny it is that for 4 years we could hug, kiss or have sex every which way we wanted but that now we couldn’t even hug. Just seeing her standing there my mind was racing. I forgot how to breathe. To move. The few feet between us that contained all the hurt and mistakes and missing words formed a barrier that was impossible to cross.

‘…Hi…’ she whispered so softly I barely heard it.

‘…You aight?’ I managed to get out.

I hated this so much. How could it possibly be this awkward? We’d shared so much together. For fucks sake it was only 6 months ago we’d been sleeping under the stars, curled up together in a sleeping bag promising each other the rest of our lives would only get better.

‘I wrote you this’ I held up the letter. ‘Can you read it before you go please’ I could tell that my voice sounded wrong.

‘Is it about us?’ She said, more a statement than a question.

I looked at her face properly for the first time and saw that she had tears in her eyes. Maybe there was some hope. It dawned on me that the whole time I had been focussing on how much this was hurting me, I hadn’t stopped to really think about how hard it must have been for her. And there it was. For a brief second. Hope. If I could just show her how much I had grown up since we had been apart, how I saw now that I had been taking her for granted, if I could just give her the excuse she needed to let her walls down and give in to her feeling then maybe there was hope for us.

‘Can you help me with my stuff first please’

‘yeah…course’ I murmured.

We took all of her stuff down without saying a word. The tension was so thick between us. My heart had been racing like crazy for the last hour now and was only getting faster. It felt like a stay of execution. But a prisoner on death row knows he’s living on borrowed time and will have to face the music sooner or later. Once we had finished I sat back down by the bed. She picked up the letter off the side and sat next to me. As she read through it I could see tears drop to the letter. I was reading it at the same time trying to figure out what she was thinking. I could feel my eyes welling up. I hated myself so bad at that moment. I felt so weak and useless. It all came back to the same point. Always the same point. You did this to yourself.

It was like waiting for a roulette ball to stop when you’ve bet your life on black. The seconds ticked by so slowly. All our lives we see on TV and read in books about these moments in life when  in the end it all turns out okay, and now here I was, hoping desperately that this was one of those moments. It was such a fucking fall from grace. I was reduced to a mess, with tears running down my cheek and feeling like any bit of pride I had left was ebbing away. But…it was a good letter. If she had been doubting her decision to leave, then a letter like that one might just have been what was needed to change her mind.

She finished reading and looked at me. Her eyes were red and full of tears. It honestly seemed to me like time slowed down. It felt like we were looking at each other for hours even though it must have only been a minute. Every second ticking by like the heart beats on a life support machine. What the fuck is she thinking?

Beep.

Please let it have got through.

Beep.

I love you so much. Just ask her what she’s thinking.

Beep.

C’mon! Say something! Anything!…please…please…

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

‘I don’t…I don’t know what you want me to say…’ she finally said.

The second she said those words I knew it was over. For all of those words, those beautifully crafted, thoughtful, emotional, real and from the heart the words, I never had a chance. She had already made her choice. I actually felt my heart break. There were no more chances. No more things I could say. I had left it all out there in that letter. For a minute I couldn’t speak. Literally. I was so numb in those moments that even the smallest thing seemed like an impossible task. I just stared at my bedroom door, full of photos of her. My eyes were streaming but I wasn’t sobbing or anything. I just sat there.

‘Are you okay?’ she asked gently. ‘I think I should just go’

I looked at her face. Her gorgeous face.

How the fuck can she be doing this?!

An anger raised up inside me. I became furious. I could feel myself getting hotter. All of the nerves, the tension, the feelings of helplessness and regret; even my hope, all just finally exploded inside me and I just couldn’t control myself.

‘So thats it? just like that? You’re just gonna fucking walk out and forget ‘bout us like we never happened?’ I snarled.

And like that it just became another argument. Another round of whose to blame. we screamed, we calmed down and then screamed again. I felt broken inside and just wanted to shout. Scream. Do anything to not accept the truth. I punched my wall so hard that I put my hand through it…and then we screamed some more. And none of it made the least bit of difference. She was leaving. For good. I found myself on my knees, hugging her thighs, broken.

‘I can’t believe it’s over’ I said.

She got down on her knees, tears cascading down her face, and pulled me close. It seemed to last forever. And then she was gone. Gone. I sat there with my back against the wall for hours. Not moving. I knew that a lot worse things had happened to people a lot better than me, but just then and there, I genuinely felt like the world had ended. I couldn’t imagine anything ever hurting this much. I was alone. All alone. No one to talk to. No one to lash out at. No one to comfort me. Because there was nothing anyone could say. I was trapped in a prison of my own making and I was facing the harsh truth.

It’s over. She’s gone and it’s all your fault.

About an hour after she left I got a text from her.

I’m sorry. xx.

Simple. Decisive. Final. And not a fucking thing I could do about it. Sorry? That didn’t even begin to sum it up.