Man oh man oh man…
I’m trying here. I’m really trying. I’ve almost managed to curb obsessive thoughts of Dave to a mere 180 or so an hour. I only picture him and his new girlfriendliving life of uninterrupted bliss around 1,000 times a day. I’ve culled him from Facebook, his number is out of my phone (with NO back-up written down anywhere or anything and I never memorised it -a sign of the digital age or a testament to the fact that we just weren’t meant to be?), I avoid the staff canteen between 9-10 and 1-2 because that’s whenhe goes up there, I stand at the’wrong’ end of the DLR platform if I’m leaving work early so that I don’t run the risk of seeing him there, I don’t go out drinking anywhere near my office and now that Tom had left (I miss you Tom…) I have next to no reasons to see him socially. As I said – I’m trying. It’s annoying that he’s managing to restrict my movements but it’s the only way I can keep sane. This way I don’t have to hear anything about him or see his shiny, happy demeanour now that he’s with The Girl Of His Dreams, which she surely is.
I don’t tell you all of this to highlight my ongoing and depressing inability to just Get On With Life Boldly – I still can’t deal with it – but I’m attempting to ease the pain by avoiding him as much as humanly possible. No, I tell you this so you can fully appreciate the impotent fury that possessed me when this happened…
The phone on my desk rang. It was Jessica who is now My Oldest Work Friend after Tom’s defection. She’s great – manages a team that runs in tandem with mine, pretty high-powered, and is always trying to get me ahead too. She actually pushed hard for Dave and i to get together which I think she now feels cripplingy guilty about. She initially hired him here and within days had thrown us together. It took her 6 months of groundwork but she’s a persistent gal and it paid off (or not) in the end. In fact, the first time I ever met him, she said “isn’t he great? you should go out with him!” as soon as he was out of earshot. It’s only fair to relate at this point that i was less than interested in him on first impression and actually ended that night panting in the back of a cab with a guy who would later become Dave’s manager. A sleazy event which I think Dave still doesn’t know about. (Lesson: I need to stay away from guys I work with.) So anyway, Jessica asked me if I could go up and see her at her desk. I scampered up the stairs to the 2nd floor eagerly, anticipating some shiny nugget of irresponsible work gossip. Then I saw the look on her face. Clearly, she was about to deliver some bad news.
She started “so… I wanted to tell you this because I didn’t want you to hear it from anyone else”
I was fine. Obviously she’d heard about the girlfriend and wanted to be the one to tell me. Even if she told me that he was marrying her, I’d cope (somehow). I’d already anticipated the worst there and I was doing my utmost to just avoid him so with time hopefully I’d just stop giving a damn. So he has a girlfriend, a wife even, so what? I was bulletproof.
But it appeared I wasn’t impervious to everything.
Dave starts working for Jessica next month. She manages the guy who’ll be Dave’s manager but he’s going to be part of her team. This is a pain in the arse not only because she’ll now know stuff that neither of us will want her to know – e.g. when he books that all-important trip to Bali to propose and he has to ask for holiday, when he gets in late because he and Supergirlhave been involved in some kind of all-night love-in, when he’s calling Tiffanys to check whether the 9 carat ring is ready etc etc etc. Not only that, but when he moved jobs the LAST time, he totally took himself out of my world, workwise. I even bemoaned the fact. Now, he’s right back in my orbit. As I’ve mentioned before,I work for an investment bank and I don;t want to get bogged down in an array of technical jargon but it’s the equivalent of me being in Hollyoaks, him currently being in Emmerdale and then moving to Hollyoaks: In The City. Same cast, slightly different locations, massive overlaps. His version has more swearing and is inferior to the original. Hahaha! (If jessica heard me say that, she’d kill me, keep it to yourselves) He’ll be on a different floor (back to the 2nd, where he was before) but will be ever-present. What a selfish prick. Jessica is beside herself and said she had very little involvement in his hire and she hopes i don’t feel betrayed (not by her I don’t…). Dave plays football with his direct manager-to-be and had been whining about how much he hated his current job so manager-to-be suggested he apply for a job in his team and you can work out the rest.
Am soooooooooooooooo annoyed. for almost too many reasons to list. But I’m going to have a fucking good go.
1) I can’t believe he’s been allowed to move internally again so fast. Usually you have to have been in the job a yer before you can request a move. He’s been there about 4 months! Get a sick thrill at the thought that he must have been SHIT if they’re so willing to let him leave.
2) I KNEW he’d hate his new job. I KNEW it. I even told you he would, were you paying attention? What a dick. Find something you’re good at and stick at it. Oh yeah, there hasn’t been anything you’ve been that good at so far (this isn’t even sour grapes, in 10 years he’s managed to achieve less than I have in 5. Although I am pretty awesome, so maybe the comparison isn’t fair. Plus I have big boobs, which helps).
3) He always wanted to work for Jessica again and was always jealous of my job. Now he has the new job and the (not even so new any longer) girlfriend. No fair. Everyone said good things would happen to meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. (not that good things don’t, but he’s had life-changing events where as i get fleeting moments of happiness)
4) He will know that this will bother me but went ahead and did it anyway. OK, I get that he has to look out for number 1, but seriously – when will this end??
5) I had really hoped that he would hate new job so much that he would just leave. Or get made redundant. Now he has the job he always wanted, he’s more likely to stick around. Which does me no good. Have had a few days to get my head round it now (was incoherent with rage initially) but when I first heard I thought I was going to just quit. Which is not good as (in case you hadn’t noticed) this is not a job-friendly time for bankers. BUt now i think that’s ridiculous as I’m the one with a CAREER here. Now deeply motivated to get promoted asap so I’m 2 grades above him instead of ‘just’ 1.
6) As much as I’m slightly less devastated than I was when I first found out, i think it’s going to be HORRIBLE. I’m going to be ccd on emails to and from him again, he’ll be sitting near Jessica so if I go and see her (which I think now I probably won’t) I’ll have to see him, he’ll be at drinks we all go to etc (which again, I think now I’ll just avoid). It’s just shit.
7) I’m still in NO WAY over this andas soon as I found out about Supergirl I knew I had to just cut him out completely and pretend he didn’t exist in order to deal with it. He just made that a whole lot harder.
Why can’t ex-boyfriends just fall off a cliff and die? Although everyone’s someone’s ex, so we;d run out of men pretty fast. OK, they don’t have to die, they just have to be teleported 5,000 miles away. It’d be like the ex-boyfriend exchange programme. See – this is why I’ve gotten ahead in life, I’m all about the Awesome Achievable Ideas. Misery day is 9th March. Although I’m still aiming to NOT write about Dave any more. As you can probably tell from this lengthy post 🙂
Is this over yet?
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