How Lara Got Her Life Back

I am sat in this bar, it’s Saturday evening and it’s around half 7. Opposite me is this guy from Liverpool. We had met at a gig about four months ago and it was quite a cute meeting considering I was not paying attention to anyone other than the band. He asks for my number out of the blue and we have a cheeky kiss but that is it. We text a little the next day but it fizzles out – what was I expecting? He lives a few hours away and to be honest, the next day, I do not remember what he looks like.

Fast forward several months and in the early hours of one Saturday morning he messages me and apologises for not being in touch. A bit of flirty chat is exchanged and honestly he is wonderful. He says all of the things that girls are told from day dot that Prince Charming says. Here are some examples –

“You are dripping in femininity – you’re the embodiment of sensuality”
“You deserve to be chased, you are a queen”
“I will treat you with all the respect a lady deserves”
“You’re not only beautiful but so smart and strong and independent”

See why I may have allowed him to take me on a date? Try having that constantly for days along with the begging of being allowed to take you out. Clearly this is not going to end well, otherwise I would not have started a blog about getting my shit together.

He arranged to get into Leeds for 2pm, check into his hotel and meet me. That day he changes his mind slightly, can we make it 4pm as he wants a shower? I can’t say fairer than that, it is, after all, an entire 2 hour journey from his home town to mine. Anyone would require a shower after that. It gets to 3:45pm and I messaged to check where I should meet him, he replies and says he fell asleep. Brilliant. He wants an extra half hour to nap. For someone who has had 9 hours sleep plus one on the train and another in the hotel he sure is tired…

Eventually he turns up and by this point I have had 2 glasses of wine which is a bloody terrible idea but what the hell else am I meant to do when I think he’s blowing me off. The thing is, we click, straight away. We have so much in common and he is funny and the conversation is flowing. We head to the next bar and he is buying the drinks and I think it is going really well.

Now, to just give you a quick heads up before I move on, our text conversations had become somewhat sexual in nature, as they tend to do, and we had pretty much decided that we wanted to spend the night together. In fact, one of his last messages to me before he arrived was “if you want to cut our daytime activities short and retire to bed you only need say”.

Now here is almost my rock bottom. It is 7:30pm, I have at this point had several glasses of wine and he has made me laugh consistently. So I put it out there… let us return to the hotel. He turns me down. The utter mortification of it. He doesn’t think we have clicked, there is no spark, he doesn’t want to lead me on, we can hang out as friends…. the usual shite that they spew. He has spent three hours in my company and he already knows he doesn’t want anything to happen with me. Am I that different in person than I am over a messaging app? I know I was a little tipsy but I was certainly not drunk and I was perfectly behaved. What is up with me that a guy will book trains and 5 star hotels specifically to take me out and then decides after 3 hours that I was clearly not worth it?

So I left him in the bar in a city he has never been to and walked out… I am a twat.

This was my rock bottom. But you need to know more about me to get why this is my rock bottom because otherwise it just seems like I am a self involved dick who expects guys to fall at her feet.

I am a student, a healthcare student, I spend all of my time in hospitals training and a lot of my spare time studying. I live on about £300 per month, I am in £3500 worth of personal debt, fuck knows how much student debt, I still owe my evil ex a ton of money and I have an addiction to Ann Summers lingerie. I’m the last single one of my friends, I am pushing 30, I have crippling anxiety, two weeks ago I got an £80 fine for dropping a cigarette on the floor, I think I am definitely tipping over 13 stone on the scales (although it has been a while), my upper body strength is such that I can’t even do one press up, I get out of breath going up one flight of stairs (probably because I smoke and that leads to bloody fines), I am such a bad cook that I have ruined nearly all of the pans in the house, I am definitely addicted to sugar/caffeine/nicotine, I have a long term and pretty debilitating health condition, and I consistently fail my exams. Such a lovely long list of woe is me.

Every year I do the typical ‘new year, new me’ bollocks and I never stick to it, I am as much of a mess in 2018 as I was at the start of 2017 and 2016 and…well it goes on y’know. I am not sure there has been a year where I have totally had my shit together. Maybe 2009….

I haven’t quit smoking, I am still way over my target weight, I have no muscle definition, my arse is as flat as a pancake, my skin is tired and bored, I have no hobbies (literally none unless Netflix is a hobby?), I eat shit, talk shit, watch shit, date shit, feel shit, worry about every tiny fucking thing, I don’t wear heels anymore, I have 6 dating apps that are constantly pinging with messages from total fuckboys, I am surprised there isn’t an international shortage of Pinot Grigio the way I go through it, my hair is in a constant mess of knots and split ends, I have no savings, I spend more than I earn, I never study and I will probably fail the next run of exams.

So I have decided that this year I will properly get my life on track. I have saved so many pins to my pinterest board to prove how dedicated I am. Of course this has taken me the entirety of January (which FYI was not dry nor smoke free) but I have plans and I have made a few tiny starts. This blog being one of them.

Here are my plans –

Quit smoking. Properly quit. Not have three weeks away from it and then have a bad day and start again. Properly quit and not buy another packet again.
Chill out the drinking. Two bottles of wine is not an achievement.
Take care of my skin; if I spend a fortune on skincare I need to use it. Also skin that is not just on my face. Fuck knows when I last moisturised my arms. Or used the stupid expensive stretchmark oil.
Get fit. Maybe not run a marathon just yet but actually tone my muscles up, build a bit of a bum, have some definition to my arms, get rid of this 16 weeks pregnant belly and have enough strength to put the towels away on the top shelf without pulling a muscle.
Eat properly. Cut out caffeine and the really shit sugar (like the packet of fangtastics sat next to me in bed…next to the empty bag of milk buttons). Eat more fruits and vegetables, have a proper breakfast every day and learn how to cook and enjoy it not just microwave a bowl of shit. Also salt. Less salt. And fizzy drinks – none of those. Which leads me to…
Get into good habits. Make my bed, take a shower, brush my teeth and wear matching underwear every day. Tiny things to organise my tiny mind. Be tidy, be clutter free and be clean.
Properly study. Sit down every day to study at least one topic even if I am feeling completely shitty. Make a revision plan and stick to it. Organise all of my notes, go to study sessions, stop being late with library books (and maybe pay the library fines…)
Read more. Less Netflix and more reading. More than just romantic literature; read classics, non-fiction, poetry, biographies, self-help.
Get a new hobby, make some new friends, be a bit more interesting and enjoy doing things that don’t revolve around uni or shopping. Go back dancing or take up a new sport; start yoga, take a class, learn a language, learn to drive (definitely learn to drive actually). Something fun.
Stop dating fuckboys.

11 months to fall in love with myself and be happier than what I currently am because it is ridiculously sad to be 29 years old and sat in my bed at my parents house on a Sunday night crying my eyes out over a boy I spent three hours with.