When I was thinking about what I was going to call this blog, I wondered if the title was right and maybe it should be called train wreck. After thinking back to that time, I decided “Runaway train” actually fitted better, as at the start of the relationship I was head over heels in love and the train didn’t go off the rails straight away. The word runaway looks really weird, but google tells me it’s runaway not run away (although I did end up doing that too I suppose). So in case you were wondering, there you go and of course Google’s first response to the search for runaway is Soul Asylum’s classic song which I was a huge fan of (I’m pretty sure I had the music video taped on VHS which makes me sound ancient).

Let me recap a little. I had just jumped ship (or maybe it should be train) and left my boyfriend of nearly six years to go out with this new guy. It was nearing the end of 2001 and I was nearly 24.

Breaking up with my ex really divided my friendships, because our circle of friends were intertwined to the next level and included family members too. Following our break up, the group became fractured and loyalties shifted. It would take time for some of the relationships to heal, and it was unfortunate that some never would.

It was an incredibly stressful time navigating the changes, I had moved house, finished a relationship, moved house again, started a new relationship and my friendships were messed up. For a short period of time I was so stressed that I’d Iost my appetite. Having always been a food lover, this was definitely not the norm for me.

In November, my sister had her twenty first birthday and us kiwis love nothing more than a booze fueled twenty first party. My ex decided that he’d been part of the family for long enough, so it was his right to come to the party. On the day of the party, I was sitting at the table with my new bloke and my ex boyfriend was sitting at another table close by, with his brother and friends. They were giving us “the evils” to the max and one of the blokes sitting at the other table was throwing peanuts at my new boyfriend. I was feeling anxious as hell and I was waiting for a fight to break out, that’s for sure.

At some stage, my boyfriends car had been sabotaged and somebody had put sugar in his petrol tank. It almost sounds like something out of the Jerry Springer show but this was my life. I don’t even know how they knew where he lived which really sparks my curiosity, even now. I think this incident happened before my sister’s party and I’m sure you can understand why tensions were running high.

Even at the start of the relationship there were red flags. I’d been told that my new boyfriend had slept (in the take your clothes off kind of way) with somebody else around the time he was pursuing me. Those rumours stayed with me throughout the relationship and even though he denied it, I never believed him. The stupid thing was that it happened before we got together so it’s not like he cheated on me. Ultimately there was always an undertone of mistrust which I have no doubt contributed to the problems within the relationship. I’ve never been good at letting things go, especially if there is doubt in my mind.

Even though there was all of this stress and turbulence going on, I was on cloud nine at times. I’d never felt like this before. I really thought I was in love. When it was time for my birthday, not long after my sisters twenty first, he purchased me a float tank voucher. I’d always wanted to go in one and I really thought I was the luckiest girl alive. What a thoughtful boyfriend I had.

At some stage, we started talking about going on a working holiday and before we knew it we’d decided to move to Australia. He’d not been back in New Zealand for long but after all we’d been through in the last six months a fresh start felt right.

I gave my work plenty of notice as I felt a little bit bad about leaving. Only a few months before I’d been gifted a rather large Christmas bonus, something that only key employees were fortunate to get. I remember going up to the office and asking if a mistake had been made as my bonus had an extra zero on it compared to others.

I kept asking my boyfriend when he was going to tell his work he was leaving and I felt extremely uncomfortable he didn’t have a plan. Eventually after my continuous nagging he made our plans known to his employer and they took his resignation effective immediately. To this day I don’t know why he didn’t have to work out a notice period but from memory he’d not been at the firm for long, so I can only assume they didn’t want to invest any more time with him. As I write this now, I wonder if his character was an issue and that was another red flag I missed or ignored. Things were different in my world that’s for sure as I’d been at my job for nearly six years and was an integral part of the team.

Now my boyfriend was unemployed and I felt like it was my fault. My desire to try and have all my ducks in a row had completely backfired. After a couple of weeks of doing odd jobs for my mums partner we decided it was best for my boyfriend to go ahead and look for work in Australia. He was lucky enough to stay with my uncle and auntie for free, but after a few days he ran into trouble. My boyfriend had gambled all his money and was flat broke. This incident should have been another red flag for me, but I guess that I put my head in the sand. You would think I would have pulled back a bit, but what did I do, I flew over to Australia for 24 hours to smooth things over with him. I remember being in such turmoil. I was so upset about the gambling and separation but wrapped up in the excitement of my whirlwind trip and seeing him again.

I flew back to New Zealand and finished off my notice period, put most of my belongings in a storage container and after a few weeks met him back in Australia.

When I moved to Australia, it was supposed to be a starting point of an overseas adventure but the reality was that I didn’t end up making it out of Melbourne. We stayed with my uncle for a while and things were pretty great for periods of time, until they weren’t.

I remember one occasion when we were out on the town and things turned nasty and we had an argument and he stormed off. I was distraught, as it was night time, I was in an unfamiliar city and I felt really vulnerable. Melbourne is a lot bigger than Hamilton, that’s for sure. He ignored my calls and texts and eventually I decided to find my way back to my uncles via the massive train network (trying to control my sobbing). As with most scenario’s, add a little alcohol onto the sparks and it turns into a pretty big fire. I am pretty sure he didn’t come home for hours and never explained where he’d been.

The timing of things is quite hazy after all these years but I remember at one point he temporarily moved into a hostel. I’m assuming this must have been after the above incident as I would have come home crying to my uncle which would of made things awkward. I remember feeling extremely anxious about him being away from me and feeling worried he was getting up to no good. I remember going to visit him in his room (which had something like four bunks in it and was shared by multiple people) at the hostel and there was a female on the other bunk who was making some pretty weird noises and I couldn’t help but wonder what the hell was going on when I wasn’t around.

After a few weeks of living in Melbourne, I found a temp job at the Building Commission. God only knows how I was keeping myself together with all the crap that was going on. I remember my sleeping was horrendous and my anxiety was high and it wasn’t long before I started taking time off work as I wasn’t coping. I was returning to my coping mechanism from school days, where I would isolate myself as a form of protection. I had successfully proven my work ethic and not fallen into that trap in my first job, but I guess ongoing stress can see you reach for those old coping styles. The anxiety caused insomnia and the tiredness caused anxiety. It’s one of those chicken and egg scenarios and can create a pretty challenging ongoing cycle. The stress of the situation and anxiety etc had quite negative impacts on my digestive system too, which didn’t help.

Despite the stress of the relationship, I worked with a great bunch of people and I loved how much grief they gave me for being a kiwi. The last digits of the phone number ended with six and they loved getting me to say it as aussies think kiwis pronounce six as sex. “Hey Nickie, what’s our phone number?”. I fell for that one a few times. I worked at the Building Commission and to them it sounded like I said “Boolding Commushion”. Their immature sense of humours definitely captured my heart and it still makes me chuckle to this day.

I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, but eventually I purchased a car and we found a delightful wee rental for us to move into. I really enjoyed furnishing the house and for a short period of time we were really happy and our relationships was stable. It was great to finally have our own space and our own home.

One night he went out on the town with some workmates and he did not come home until the sun had some up or something like that. I think he’d left his phone at home (probably on purpose), so I’d heard nothing from him since he left to go and have drinks. I barely slept all night and was a nervous wreck. I can’t remember exactly what happened next but I think I went over to my uncles house to talk to him and his wife about things. By then I had been at my job for five months and I’d been the acting manager for the last month, with a permanent job offer on the table in another department.

It’s like a light bulb went off that morning and I was done with his bullshit. I didn’t care if I was going home (New Zealand) with my tail between my legs, I was out of there.

I felt extremely embarrassed about letting my employer down but I knew I had to get away from him. They were very gracious about my swift departure and within a few days I’d booked my flight to go home. I’d felt extremely homesick as well and isolated I suppose. I needed my family and friends (what was left of them) around me.

When I got back to New Zealand, I’d been gone for six months almost to the day. I left all the things I bought for the house there and my uncle organized to sell my car. In the space of six months or so I had lost a large amount of weight and while I was exercising more, I’d say some of it was stress related. I had also come back with credit card debt in both countries, despite leaving New Zealand with a healthy bank balance. I don’t think it was just my bank balance that was depleted, that’s for sure.

You’ll probably be thinking, thank god she’s broken up with this guy. Now she can have a fresh start and get herself back together, but no, that’s not what happened. It’s absolutely crazy to think, but after I returned home, we stayed in touch and we started rekindling our romance. Maybe absence does make the heart grow stronger/fonder? It wasn’t long before he came back to New Zealand and we were a couple again.

I got a temp job straight away in the insurance industry and he came to live with me in the room I was renting. After a little while things started to go pear-shaped again. I think it’s fair to say we brought out the worst in each other. At one point I loaned him my car (a lovable piece of crap) and he went out of town to visit some family. The next thing you know he is holding onto my car and threatening to dump it in the river. Who does that shit? I mean, like what the actual fuck man.

When he came back to Hamilton, I was relieved to have my car returned and we parted ways again. This time it was for good. I think I can safely say my friends and family were happy to see the back of him, although I don’t know if I let on how bad things had been.

As I’m typing all this stuff, I am shaking my head as even I can’t believe I went through all this crap and that I confused lust for love and kept opening the door to him. Even though our relationship was not physically violent, it was certainly not healthy and I can understand why people stay in shit relationships. In my case, my heart was definitely overriding my head. I also think for me, my personal friendships had been tested by this relationship and I felt like people were judging my decisions.

I certainly learnt a lot from that relationship, especially about communication. One was that some people don’t like to talk about their problems and sometimes you just can’t make things better by talking. I also learnt we all communicate differently and that I have to accept some situations will never be resolved. I also learnt that you have to back off and give people space as the more you push for resolve, the more you actually push the person away (in fact a lot of situations seem to be like that from a law of attraction perspective especially). I guess my communication style of wanting to talk about things and come up with solutions is not for everybody. It’s something there in my personality too, where I seek answers and resolutions for things. I need to understand why things happen and I suppose as I’ve gotten older I realize that sometimes things will happen and you will never know or understand why.

Another lesson was the red flags and while it is okay to give people the benefit of doubt or second chances, it’s also okay to walk away. Another learning, although I did not put this together at the time, is that a lot of the time people’s behaviour is actually a reflection of how they feel about themselves (which really helps reframe things). Sometimes the saying “it’s not all about you” is actually true and it’s not meant in the way that it sounds. Lastly, and this feeds into the previous a bit, but I also learnt not to blame myself all the time if something goes wrong. If something goes wrong or someone is upset, my default position seems to be that I have done something wrong. It’s a rather odd concept as for the most part I’m a pretty caring and considerate person. Don’t get me wrong, I have made many mistakes over the years and sometimes I can be a dickhead but I’m sure we can all admit we’ve done things we’re not proud of or could’ve done things better/differently. Not that I’m trying to make excuses, but I would say a lot of those dickhead moments were probably to do with my unhealthy relationship with alcohol. I’ll definitely talk more about that in future blogs.

I think you can see why I was going to name this blog train wreck. The relationship was a train wreck almost from the start but I was too “in love” to walk away and I didn’t want to admit failure either. It’s also become obvious to me while I’ve been reading/editing this blog, that I care way too much about what other people think about me and I let that impact on my decisions, especially with how the relationship played out.

In my next blog I will talk about the aftermath of the train wreck (the relationship was the train wreck originally but I think the relationship left me as one too) and how things look as I navigate the remainder of my twenties and I sail into my thirties.