I used to know this guy. You don't need to know his real name. But for the purpose of this, let's call him John.
Now John wasn't just some guy to me. He was one of my closest friends. I would have even gone so far as to say that he was my best friend at a certain stage of my life. He helped me out through thick and thin, stood by my side in the worst of times and enjoyed the best of times right along with me. John really was an amazing man.
Five years I knew him. Quite honestly, with everything that was happening around me, they were the best of times. I'd met Clara, started The Script, got my life on track. I'm not going to say that John was the sole reason of my happiness. Of course he wasn't. But he was most definitely a key part in the new life I had discovered.
I'm not sure what it was, or when it even happened, but things started to go a bit strange. I would get messages off John day in, day out. Not even something that was worth talking about. Just random words that would eventually lead into a conversation of sorts. Mostly of him complimenting me.
I didn't see it at first. I just thought 'that's nice', and pushed it to the back of my head. But then I heard that he was sending abusive messages through to Clara. Not direct abuse. I would have murdered him for that. But it just wasn't right. She was his friend too, after all. There was no call for those kinds of things.
But all the while, the messages to me got nicer and nicer. And if I was having a bad day, he'd instantly know about it and would be able to extract the deepest of problems from me. Things that I didn't even know were niggling in the back of my head came flying out of my mouth and into the palm of his hand. I felt better instantly and he seemed happy to have helped.
But what I didn't realise was that my dear friend John was going behind my back and twisting my words. A minuscule detail that I had happened to mention went straight back to Clara in full force, highly exaggerated and, quite frankly, completely untrue. And naturally, this didn't go down well.
I didn't understand why, as the days passed, Clara started to want more and more time alone. This wasn't a part of our usual routine of togetherness, and definitely was a change that I was not comfortable indulging in. We were a team at this point. We'd been together nearly a year now I believe, so we were pretty indestructible. Or so I thought.
The indestructible team started to crumble from within. The more she wanted space, the more I demanded answers. And the more answers I demanded, the more she pushed me away. I just couldn't understand it. We fought nearly every day for a week or so until finally she couldn't take any more. She turned to me and told me we were done. That she couldn't take it. And before I had the chance to work out what the fuck was going on, she'd left.
I don't know if this makes me feel quite obsessed now, but in the few weeks that we were apart, I couldn't breathe. It felt like the air around me had just stopped providing me the sufficient oxygen to survive and was instead filling my lungs with the deadly carbon monoxide that we humans breathe out. It was torture to know that somewhere out there, the love of my life was wandering the world without me by her side. I couldn't even bring myself to leave my apartment. Lucky for me, we hadn't moved in together at this point, so there wasn't that much to remind me of her as there is in our current apartment. Nonetheless, every detail I laid eyes upon reminded me of Clarabel Kennedy. So much so, that I eventually resorted to never leaving my bed. I was a wreck and I genuinely believed that things could not get worse.
That's when John comes in.
I'm not really sure how he managed to get into the apartment, but he was there one morning when I woke up. In any normal state, you would scream at him for trespassing and demand he leave at once. But I was in no normal state. I was in break-up hell, and felt like the entire world was against me. So to see a face that I recognise in front of me, someone who wouldn't tell me to man up like Mark had or tried to convince me to pick up new hobbies like Glen had, was a welcome sight.
