Elsie-Rae's got Double D's

one day in may, a piece of my heart went away

It was the beginning of May and we'd had a barbecue for my birthday; I'd thought I'd be spending my sixteenth getting wasted with my mates like Steph had, but that wasn't an option and actually, I preferred my birthday the way it had turned out, well, that part of the day was good, at least.

I was supposed to be doing my GSCE's that year, I had it all planned out, I'd do my exams, take the summer off and defer my college place for a few months — start my studies at home and then roll in after October half-term.

And then on the night of my birthday, it happened. The doctors said that it was just one of those things, that I didn't do anything wrong, but sometimes even now I can't help but think that maybe I did.

Ben wasn't there with me when I needed him to be. My mum tried to call him, but he'd got into the habit of turning his phone off, Steph went to his house, but apparently, he was out.

My mum had to take me to the hospital to give birth, but I didn't get a baby to take home, and I'm not a mother. According to the law, he didn't even exist, but how can that be true when I held him in my arms, and he was so small, but at the same time, he was so perfect.

Needless to say, my GCSE's weren't the rip-roaring success I'd planned for them to be — I only passed two, maths and French. Ben didn't have any such problems, he smashed his A-Levels, he got to go away to uni and live his life, while I stayed home. My offer of a college place was retracted, I didn't have the grades needed to get in and all the other courses were full, you know the courses where qualifications weren't important.

That was when it all started with the reading the problem pages in magazines; it soon became a bit of an obsession, and it made me feel better reading about people whose lives were a little bit more shit than mine was. Then I started on the star signs; they made me feel hopeful.

I read my signs one morning over breakfast, and Leroy said that things were about to start looking up and right after I got that apprenticeship at the salon. For the first time in what seemed like forever everything seemed to be going okay, I had new friends and somewhere that I felt like I belonged.

And then Ben came home for the Christmas holidays and things were like they were before everything bad had happened, he took me out on dates and wanted to spend time with me. Everything was great, but then I asked to borrow his phone and I guess he must've forgotten about the texts from Abi, and I tried to rationalise it and make an excuse, but the truth is there weren't any.

"It was a mistake, I was drunk," Ben said.

And all I remember thinking is that he must've been drunk a lot. And I must've been so stupid.

This week has been tough, but maybe thinking about everything that's happened over the years has been a good thing.

I think the truth of this whole situation is that things between Ben and me hadn't been right for a very long time, long before he dumped me. We never really had a proper relationship after everything happened. My mum was the one who was at my side that day in the hospital, Ben was too busy getting wasted. He went away to uni and did who knows what with Abi and whoever came after; I forgave him for everything, and he didn't deserve that.

As if he has the cheek to call me out for kissing one guy after we broke up. It wasn't like I ever cheated on him, and I wouldn't have done either. I didn't go to clubs and dance with other guys; I didn't accept friend requests on Facebook from Dan Smith or Tom Stevens because Ben knew that they had fancied me back in school. I never even accepted a drink from Dom Taylor whenever he offered to buy me one, and we'd known each other forever. I was a loyal girlfriend; maybe I was too loyal, too trusting and too naive. I believed that love conquered all, I've seen it in the movies and almost every single fairy tale. But Ben was about as far from being Prince Charming as you can get; he wasn't even a frog, he was a fucking snake.

Aaron asked me to go out last night, but I didn't fancy it and it's been nice to wake up without a hangover on a Sunday for the first time in years. I needed to be hangover free for today's plans anyway.

I've decided to have a purge — if this week's taught me anything it's that I don't need to hang on to rubbish, just because it might have a bit of sentimental value it doesn't mean I need it. Not everything has good memories attached to it.

As for Ben, I've decided to cut him out of my life for good. First thing I did when I woke up this morning was delete and block his number. And then I completely erased all photos of him from my Facebook and Instagram which was really bloody hard because we'd had some good holidays and unfortunately his face found its way into a lot of my photos, that was all before breakfast as well.

This afternoon I packed up the 'Worlds Best Girlfriend' teddy along with all those other little knick-knacks that card shops tell you that you need to buy to show someone how much you love them. And tomorrow, I shall be carting it off to one of the charity shops in town, and that'll be it, Ben will be gone for good.