A lot of people will walk in and out of your life
but only true friends will leave footprints in heart
It happens once in your life, only once I’m told, when you meet someone who you will never be able to replace. I found that someone and now it looks like I’ve lost him forever. I remember the first day I saw him- it was lust at first sight. My heart skipped a beat, my jaw dropped to the floor and all the other clichés you can think of happened. He was everything I’d ever wanted but never been allowed, he was the man my mother had warned me about. The moment I laid eyes on him I knew that he would break my heart: and he sure did. I was shy and naïve when we first met and he was wild and didn’t believe in anything, especially not love. He helped me become the person that I am today and I hope that in some small way I changed him- even if only a bit.
I felt alive only when I was in his arms, every time my heart beat when we were together I thought it would burst with happiness. Every moment I was with him I found out a new thing that amazed me more about the man who everyone else thought was arrogant and self-centred but I knew was anything but. Back then I was happy: so happy that looking back on it now it seems like a dream, a distant magical dream.
Then it happened: the incident. Looking back I can see how jealous Ed had been- how he would have done anything to split me and Patrick up. He was still bitter about the fact that I had chosen to leave him and that I was happy without him. I should never have trusted him; I should have known that any word that came out of his mouth would have been a dirty great lie. But I trusted people, I believed in the good in everyone- what a mistake that had been. If only I’d tried a bit harder to cling onto the man that meant so much too me. But I didn’t. Instead I ran away from him, avoiding him at work and not returning his calls. At the time it had seemed like the easy option but in reality it had been anything but easy. So many nights I spent crying, loosing more time than was wise to try and count. Every day that I spent alone without him and without his love I could feel all my newly found confidence slipping out of my grip and I knew that I would soon return to the shadow of a creature I was before I met him. I was left with nothing but an empty life and a hole that only he could fill.
Time is supposed to heal isn’t it? Well I’ll tell you this for free: it doesn’t. The days turned into weeks, the weeks into months and eventually it had been years since I’d been with him: been happy. It didn’t get any easier though. There was still and amazing pain deep inside me every time I thought about being without him and heart breaking loneliness every time anyone tried to get close to me. No one could ever compare to him: no one would ever be able to fill his shoes. So I battled on day by day, keeping the smile glued to my face while inside everything fell apart. Every day was the same until…
“Holly, long time no see. This place is full of surprises.” How dare he just walk back into my life and act as if it was no big deal? Part of me wanted him to disappear into the thin air he’d inhabited for the past six years so that he never existed. Denial was a very comfortable place. But then there was another part of me that wanted to grab him and never let him go in an attempt to grab onto the happiness we once had. But I just couldn’t. There was something deep inside me that had changed during those six years on my own and now it was me who didn’t believe in love and him who was chasing me. I was afraid, so afraid that if I ever trusted him again I would only end up being hurt. So instead I fought with him: concentrating on the arrogant, self-centred side of him that everyone knew so well and pretending that I never knew what he could really be like: who he really was. There were times when I felt myself falling even deeper in love with him, times like Christmas eve in the barn and when he got himself kidnapped, but somehow I always managed to stop myself giving in to him. The fear was always too much, until…
“You keep trying to change me. You keep wanting me to be somebody that I’m not. I’ll never be good enough for you.” That was the moment I realised he was hurting as much as I was. That he was afraid too. And why was he afraid? Because, like me, he feared rejection- he’d been as hurt as I had when we split up but when I’d been thinking that no one could ever replace him he had been trying to fill the gap I’d left. From that moment on I wasn’t afraid anymore because I knew that he loved me and would never hurt me because that would mean hurting himself too.
So I wanted to stay. Germany was a cold, uncaring place without the man I loved. Without him I found it hard to breathe, sleep or eat but from the day I had lost my fear of Patrick I had gained a new, stronger fear. A fear of myself. Tom Harvey had made me hate myself more that I had ever thought possible. I didn’t trust anyone else and I certainly didn’t trust myself. I must have lead him on, given him the wrong signals: it must have been my fault. Everything in Holby, in England, reminded me of him and what he’d done to me- tried to do to me- and so I had to leave. Get as far out of Holby and as far away from it all as I could manage. He begged me to stay and when I said no he begged to come with me but I still couldn’t let him. I didn’t deserve him- not when I’d lead Tom on like that. So I went on alone. Knowing that it would hurt but hoping I’d done the right thing.
Have I done the right thing? Now I’m back and I’m not so sure. I can see him as he lies on that cold, hateful trolley with her sobbing her heart out over him. Can she feel the pain I feel when I know it’s all my fault? I had my chances and I screwed them up: every one. Nearly nine years on will she still feel the pain of loosing him? I know that I do, nine years after the first day we met it still hurts. But now, now there’s no second chance, I’ve lost him forever and the pain will never go away.
Slowly I push open the heavy door to resus and walk slowly forward, my vision clouded by my boiling tears. She doesn’t look up, this pretty blonde woman, but I know she knows I’m there. Then I see it- the final blow to my fragile state, the final nail in my suffocating coffin. The ring. It shiners like a thousand stars in her hand and cuts like a thousand knives in my chest. I fall to my knees and sob openly but still she doesn’t look up- the pretty blonde woman who had his heart. Maybe this is because she doesn’t see me, maybe I’m not here at all and maybe it wasn’t just my soul that died with Patrick. Could I be dead too? I feel dead enough but I know that I can’t be, the pain I feel tells me I’m still here. Still here even though you’ve gone- still hurting all these years on.
It happens once in your life, only once I’m told, when you find someone you will never be able to replace. I found that someone and now I’ve lost him forever. Gone, you’re really gone. I look up into your vacant expression and I can see that all to clearly. You know what hurts the most? Seeing her, the pretty blonde woman who won your heart and your ring and knowing that you have left me alone with nothing but your size 12 footprint across my heart. Knowing that all though no one will ever be able to fill your shoes I was so… replaceable.