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Kidding myself that life without Caroline would be easy was a necessary deception. I had to be positive in order to be able to move forward. Once I could face eating again, after being dumped, I decided to cut out the foods which were keeping me fat and start exercising. I lost 4 stone in weight (well, over the course of several months). I joined in with the student debating society, meeting Chris, with whom I'll be performing The Musical! in Edinburgh this year, and with whom I've now written two musicals - approximately 2 and a half hours worth of entertainment. I went to the Edinburgh Festival, pledged to take my own show there the following year (I sensibly left it a bit longer before staging a full-length show... and even this one might be premature), got into stand-up comedy, joined amateur operatic societies and got into performing in musicals, met lots of people and generally spread Ashley-shaped joy around wherever I could.
That's not bad.
The start to this life was a weekend in London, after walking away from Teesside airport. I stayed in a hotel, I watched some football and drank tea, early one Friday morning. I spent a weekend with one of my oldest friends - who managed to make me feel at home in his flat in all of 30 seconds, despite our not having spent more than an hour in each other's company in 5 years. Weekend breaks can do you the world of good.
I don't know why I've written the rest of this story. I've spent a fair old amount of time on it recently. It's exactly two years to the day that I became single. I'd not experienced the tenderness of a partner for some time before that too, and haven't since. I've tried very hard to come to terms with life alone and I think I've done well under the circumstances. I don't want to be alone for the rest of my life, and I equally don't want to put myself into the crushing situation of working around someone else in a way that leads to walking the line of least resistance - i.e. doing virtually nothing of any interest.
I love having my own personal space, but it would be nice if there were someone in it. That makes no sense, I know. I'm both excited by the prospect of meeting the right person and overawed and scared to death of it. It's almost undoubtedly not going to happen if I insist on spending most of my time in a car on the M62, as stand-up comedy often seems to entail. Equally, I would not expect anyone to tolerate my behaviour, which seems to make me a person with little time to give to someone else. So I don't know. I really have no idea. I think the secret is not to plan for anything other than the immediate and just play it by ear. When I met Caroline I wasn't looking for anyone and I specifically wasn't expecting to find anyone interested in me. That's the thing about relationships - they kind of just happen, you can't manufacture them.
If there appears to be any bitterness in what I've just written, then it's a misunderstanding. I both lost Caroline in the last few chapters and got my life back. Perhaps that was a fair swap.
Thanks for reading.
20 May 2004
Ashley Frieze