User Unknown

Chapter 1: Introductions

Would you like to know a quote that has always stayed with me?

"Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning." ~ Maya Angelou.

You see, I'm a writer. That's what I call myself, anyway. I write and write and write for hours on end, tapping out exciting novels based on outer space adventures, or intimate and erotic love affairs, or the joys (or not) of being a single woman in her thirties, just bumping her way through life.

I have plenty of tales inside of me. Lots of different weird and wonderful stories. But you won't have heard of anything I've written; I've never actually finished writing anything. I've started more than one hundred books in my years on this planet, and I've even penned the middle to a few of them, but for some reason, completely unbeknown to me, I can't finish a damn story.

I can't seem to finish anything in life.

Well, apart from relationships. I'm really good at finishing those. Or, rather, causing the finishing of them.

Even, it seems, when I'm not in a relationship at all. I guess I'd best start explaining myself ...

(And maybe I'll actually finish this story.)

How about we start with introductions?

Who am I?

I'm no one, really.

I'm a thirty-something-year-old woman. Thirty-two if you want to get really exact about things. And I'm currently single, not that that should define who I am as a person. But I think it does define you as a person, especially after a while, and especially when you've experienced some of the things I have. I've had one failed relationship after another, none of them lasting longer than a couple of years, each of them slightly more traumatic than the one before — and, to be honest, I think it's made me a little bitter and jaded about love.

I'm one of those types you'd probably categorise as "unlucky in love", because I pick the worst lovers, make the worst relationship choices, and generally have the worst decision-making skills when it comes to a significant other in my life. But, much like many other people out there, all I really want is to find a significant other — that one person I want to spend the rest of my life with.

Instead of finding that, though, I've found a series of people with whom I've had vicious, mess, and toxic relationships. I can't place the blame entirely at their feet, or mine, but I can place it at ours, collectively. It's hard to know when a relationship is so bad that it can ever be good for longer than a few weeks, but that's a lesson you only learn after you've bashed and bruised up your heart a bit. And even now, in my thirties, I'm still not sure I've learned that lesson.

So much for learning from your mistakes, eh?

What else can I tell you about me?

I'm childless, but you've probably already guessed that.

Yes, I do want kids at some point.

Yes, I would like to be in a stable, long-term relationship if and when I do.

And yes, I'm very aware that my biological clock is a'ticking. I've been informed ... many, many times.

What do I do for work?

Nothing exciting. I'm a personal assistant for a public relations consultant, all the emphasis on 'personal' — but I want to be a writer. A novelist, actually. It's my number one dream in life to see my name written on the spine of a book, nestled in amongst other best-selling books, on a shelf, in an actual bookshop. I don't even mind so much if people don't buy the book, or if they hate it. I just want to see my name there, on the spine of a book, on a shelf, in an actual bookshop. I want to take a photo of it, filter it, think up a witty caption for it, and then upload it to the 'Gram, as the cool kids would say. (They do still say that, right?)