Lost minds & broken hearts

Sometimes I forget I'm my age! There are times, when I think I'm still that young, dumb, innocent 19 year old running around, enjoying everything that life throws at me with the wide-eyed wonder that youth has, seeing things through eyes for the very first time, everything new again. However there other's when I feel my age, painfully clearly, take yesterday for example. I woke with promise and joy, the weather was nice and bright and the sun almost blossomed in the sky, so I decided I would walk to the marina and pick up a new kettle, as mine inexplicably blew up the other day. So I picked up my backpack, keys, iPod and headed out the door, with a spring in my step and a song in my heart. I love my little iPod and I had the tunes blasting my lug holes as I trotted my way along Edward Street, up passed the hospital and through the upper reaches of Kemptown. It was then that I realised two things, A) I had odd socks on and B) My wallet was still on the computer desk. I laughed at myself, no honestly I did, out loud, much to the dismay of the OAP that happened to be walking passed at the time. So I turned round, and walked all the way back home again, this time along Upper St James Street. I collected my wallet and dropped off my bag and headed back out, this time I went in the complete opposite direction of ASDA and the Marina, it was only when I'd crossed the Old Stein that I remembered that I was out to actually get a kettle! I laughed out loud again, I walked through the Lanes, their little alleys, odd squares and wonderful shops make me grateful for living in a place such as this. I came out up by Churchill Square, had a look in the shops and wondered what on earth I was doing out! 'Oh Yes' I thought as I perused the cookie counter at Millie's, 'Kettle' my mind screamed at me, so it being the week before pay day and funds not in abundance, I popped into Woolies, hoping to find a good but non expensive water boiler.

So finally after two and a bit hours out, I did return home with my purchases, yes, I did get the kettle, bargain in Woolies as it happens, just a fiver! I also returned home with 100 tea light candles, a tin of chocolate orange segments, and after a detour to Boots, a bottle of Derbac M, because my lil closeted apprentice, flower giver has given me more than blooms, he's also given me a dose of crabs!

It's my age, I said to myself as I rested the aching bones on the sofa, I think I'm losing my mind, it's not just the forgetting of things, such as the wallet and where I'm going and what I'm out for. No, it's also the talking and laughing to myself out loud, indeed that's the most worrisome part of it, I hardly notice I'm doing it, I wonder what else I've said out loud and not noticed? I pointed this fact out to Jake on the phone last night and my concerns of loosing my mind, he was bluntly reassuring "Honey, yes you do talk to yourself, and don't worry about loosing your mind, you've already lost it!"

I'm lucky, my life brings me in touch with many people, all of different ages, backgrounds and situations, I want to tell you the story of Kelly, that's presented itself today.

Kelly, is a bright and enthusiastic, full of life 18 year old local girl, always so happy with her lot, always displaying the sunny disposition that makes her popular amongst her peers, the life and soul of a party you might say. Plus she is very good looking, no indeed she is, she has a face that would not look out of place in the glossy magazines, further more, she'd outshine so many of those nameless faces, but that's not the point, just background information. Unusually for her, she logged on to a social networking and web cam chat site late on a bored and lonely weekend night a few weeks back. She says there were the usual wasters or social misfits on their that you really wouldn't want re-heeling you shoes let alone chat to you. Yet there was one young man, one shining light that was different, in Kelly's words, 'one shining prince amongst the dregs of humanity' She got chatting to him on that website with questionably morals and they then swapped MSN addresses and chatted on there.

This lad, the same age as her, a student at university, just as she, good looking apparently and charming and interesting. In Kelly's mind there was a spark, like a light switch being turned on for the very first time, illuminating a whole new spectrum of emotions. This boy, another William, had a web cam and he would often go on it for Kelly, Kelly herself, following a curious incident with a bottle of fig vodka, an open window and a neighbours stray cat was minus camera facilities, yet this didn't seem to bother William, no indeed he even looked and found one for her on eBay for the knock down price of a penny plus postage and packing.

Over the passing days and nights, they swapped mobile numbers and they swamped each other with texts, the way the young seem to do, it's as if the art of conversation is dieing out and being replaced by the non verbal communication of fingers on keys, mobiles, blackberries, MSN and the like. Anyway, Kelly planned a surprise visit, she purchased a train ticket, as well as some, shall we say, intimate gifts and items to ensure their real life meeting would be just as explosive and passionate as their net meetings. However, he'd been out the night before her early start to go to him, they live a fair distance from each other you understand, yet she was prepared to go all that way and meet him, after all, he was perfect, cute, funny, entertaining, chatty and as into her as she was into him. He bombed her with texts in the middle of the night and one thing lead to another and she didn't take the early morning train and her weekend was left tattered and broken, he said sorry, she forgave him and their net relationship continued and day by day her passion grew to unfathomable lengths.

Kelly is not naive, not totally inexperienced, she's had boyfriends in the past, indeed, she's never short of male attention, yet this time there was something different. 'It was as if he had a magic touch to reach inside me and make me feel things I've never felt before' she says with cloudy emotion stinging her soft and now sorrowful eyes. Kelly, had it's fair to say, fallen in love, head over heals, hock line and sinker, 101% prime time in love with William, and he seemed to be the same. He told her as much in countless texts, on MSN and showed her on cam. It was, the most passionate and powerful not to mention intense relationship, desire, want, emotion that she'd ever have. There were a few times where she even thought about just going up there, not just for the day or the weekend, but dropping everything back here in Brighton and heading to where William was studying.

Just last week, she had started to make plans, to go up on Thursday this week to see the object of her desire, arranging things with her friends and someone to take notes for the classes she would miss. Now Kelly is a pretty level headed girl, she was going to see how things went, before making any big or rash decisions, but she knew she wanted to be with him, not just for the physical side of things but also the emotional as well, to get to know the person that had turned her whole world upside down. The person, whom even the mere thought of his name made her stomach turn cartwheels and her heart to pound like never before.

As I'm sure your expecting now, things in real life never turn out the way of dreams, they way we wish things to be very rarely happens, if ever in reality. After their nightly MSN chat and they said there sweet goodbyes and proclamations of their feelings, it was bed time. A few minutes after setting her music player to plays some soothing sounds for her to drift off to, she had a text from a girlfriend. "You gotta see this cutie on ((the website on which she'd met William)) he's a dish" Kelly replied that she wasn't really interested, in her mind she had her man and wanted nothing else. Her friend replied "He's going on MSN, here's his addy -" The MSN address that she read in disbelief was that of her own, very dear William. Tears stung her eyes and her body went numb, she got her friend to do a screen capture and send it to her and her worst fears were realised and the picture she received. Yes, there was her William, on the net, performing for other girls and inviting other girls to chat and more with him on MSN. Kelly's world shattered, her dreams, her hopes, her desires, her future destroyed in an instant. She text William immediately, his replies were cross and aggressive and told her he was sleeping in bed, the reality was clearly different.

Seeing Kelly this upset over a boy she'd never actually physically met is a hard task to do, how can one explain to her that she'll get over it, that at least it's better now then had she gone and met him. That her feelings of loss, of disappointment, of broken trust, of misery are nothing just because she met him online. You can't, because they are not, they are as real to her now as if he'd been the boy she met in the park, or at the club. The world is getting a smaller place, we as a human race are spending more and more time online, we're reaching out as never before, in ways that would never have seemed possible even a few years back. A consequence of this technological advance is that hearts are going to get broken over the net, just as Kelly's is now. Just because it's through a broadband connection, doesn't soften the blow, heal the heartache or dry the tears, save a lonely girl from the devastation of a broken heart. This may be the first time Kelly has suffered such pain and an old cynic like me, might venture that it almost certainly wont be the last, but that doesn't take away the rawness of the emotion. And, do you really get over something like this? Does it not stay with you, for a long time to come, perhaps life? Do we every truly forget the pains of the past, the troubles of our teenage years? Do I not sit here, right now and regret letting 'CapBoy' slip through my fingers? Of course the pain will subside in time, life, however seemingly improbable to Kelly right now, will go on, she'll find happiness again, yet this loss of what was and what might have been will stay with her forever. And that's a hard cross to bare, I only hope that her William, understands and appreciates the full cost and consequences his actions have caused. The cruel irony of life of this tale is the web cam on which she wanted to please her William, arrived today, along with her heart brake. How to mend a broken heart!

The music playing in my mind, Let's talk about it in the morning, Martyn Joseph.