The Suburbs

Chapter one - Alex

FIRST DRAFT - WILL HAVE SOME GRAMMAR MISTAKES! Please bare with me, as this is a first draft I am certain there will be a few typo's and spelling/grammar issues.

Divorced. It's official. I'm thirty-six years old and divorced.
I study the papers over and over again in my hands and allow myself a moment to feel sadness over the words. A tear effortlessly falls down my cheek as I recall our six years of marriage. Not because I miss him or even because it's over but because I feel as though I wasted so much time. That's the worst feeling, realising six years of your life was spent with the wrong person. It just makes that part of your life feel so void.
I met Alex at a New Year's Eve party seven years ago. I was fresh out of university and a newly qualified sports journalist. I landed on my feet pretty quickly and managed to get myself a job working as a sports columnist for a popular newspaper. It was at my new job where I started networking and meeting new people, particularly famous athletes. I was star struck each time. This lifestyle was fast paced and more glamorous than I had ever anticipated. A lot of the athletes threw over the top house parties, particularly the younger footballers and rugby players. They were notorious for it. Around Christmas time, Alex messaged me out of the blue on my social media account. He told me how he had been reading my columns and really enjoyed my style of writing and my passion for sports. Alex was a well known welsh rugby player, he was one of the best in not only his club but his country.
It made me nervous to see his name appear in my messages, it was surreal. I had been dreaming of this world since I was in my early teens. I dreamt of meeting these kinds of people and immersing myself into sports and getting the opportunity to meet such talented and brilliant athletes, but I never once dreamt it could be like this.
I giggle a little as I recall his first ever message to me.

Wow. I have been reading your columns now for quite some time and before I clocked the feminine name, I always pictured some old bloke with a grey beard and pipe who spends his weekends going to local cricket matches and betting on the horses and yet here you are. Quite the opposite. Quite Beautiful. Can I take you out on a date? Unless of course you do have a beard and a pipe?

With that message, our relationship started. I agreed to go on a date with Alex and I accompanied him to a New Years Eve party hosted by an ex-England footballer and it was one of the best nights of my life. I met so many sports heroes of mine and drank the best champagne and partied with big names. It was magical. But so was Alex. I was in awe of him. He was popular, well-liked, funny and kind. We went on to have a very fun relationship. We were in love but we were also young. Young with a lot of money. We went on holidays, skiing in the alps, shopping in New York, sunbathing in Hawaii and flying first class to other countries I never dreamt I would visit. Then one day on my thirtieth birthday everything changed when Alex got down on one knee in the middle of Miami Beach and proposed to me. How could I say no? We seemingly had it all. We were in love, we were having so much fun, I had my career, he had his and together we were thriving.
Until that is, Alex had a serious injury a few months after our wedding.
He wasn't playing rugby when it happened, but riding his first motorbike. He bought a Harley Davidson on a whim one day and thought he'd take it for a spin as soon as it was delivered. He had no previous experience, no clue really on how to ride a bike but he was convinced it was easy and so off he went.
Nearly forty minutes later I had police at my door to tell me there had been a serious accident and Alex had crashed into the back of a truck in one of the country roads.
He was airlifted to a top London hospital and although they managed to stabilise him quickly, his injuries were far too serious that he would need years of support and physio to correct all the damage he had done. I knew straight away his rugby career was over. I worried deeply about how he would react to a life without playing rugby and fulfilling the career he had been working towards for so long but nothing could prepare me for the reality of what was to become of him.
As the months turned into years, the Alex I had known and loved was virtually non-existent. The new Alex relied heavily on whiskey just to get out of bed in the morning and spent most of his days treating me as though he hated me.
Every day I felt guilty. I still had my career, my columns were still popular, my social life was thriving and I was still living in the glamorous life of professional athletes and all the parties and fun that go along with it. But Alex refused to attend anything sports related once his career came to an end. Sports became a forbidden topic in our house. I loved Alex but nothing I did made him any happier. Nothing gave him back any of the drive and the ambition that he used to have.
The arguments had gotten worse, he hated me for being apart of that life without him and for continuing to be a sports journalist. His drinking became heavier and it got to the point where I couldn't remember a time when I had seen him sober.
I pleaded with him to put down the bottle and to fight for us, for our relationship and for his future.
Alex wasn't interested. The only thing he would do was lock himself away in his man cave and drink himself into an abyss.
The last straw came when one bank holiday weekend he got so drunk that his anger grew uncontrollable. He started blaming me for everything that had gone so wrong in his life and in front of my eyes he begun smashing up our home. He threw our photo frames against walls, he put a golf club through our television and our cabinets, he smashed every cup and plate in the kitchen and bellowed that I was to blame whilst he did it. Then he turned to me, his eyes filled with venom and body language fuelled by hate and he raised his hand to me. He stopped himself at the last second and punched the wall next to me instead. But it was enough.
Our marriage was over and I wasn't going to spend my life as the villain in Alex's story anymore. I had to get out.
I secretly hoped for a little while that the start of the divorce proceedings would prompt Alex into fighting for me. But nothing happened. I packed up and left Alex in our six bed home in London and headed for my temporary apartment near Crystal Palace. It wasn't luxury but it was better than a life walking on eggshells with Alex.
Football is a game made up of two forty-five minute halves. Sometimes the first half of the match can indicate everything you should expect from a game but occasionally and most excitingly, a second half can be truly unpredictable.
Take Newcastle vs Arsenal for example, in the first half Arsenal managed to score four goals and looked very much as though they were going to win the game with ease, most expected Arsenal to finish with eight goals to nil, or something equally as theatrical. As the second half went underway, most of the Newcastle fans left the stadium as Newcastle's chances looked bleaker as time went on. However, unbelievably Newcastle managed to score four goals with the last goal being scored in the last few minutes of the game. The stadium was electric. This made the game a brilliant and entertaining comeback, one which would go down in history. Which is just like life really.
I wipe the tear from my eye and carefully tuck away the divorce papers into a plastic folder. As I close the folder I can't help but smile a little. The first half is finished now. Let's see what the second half brings.