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?)
But, you know, one must actually finish a novel before they can call themselves a novelist.
I have no hope of seeing my name on the spine of a book if I don't actually pen an ending to a story.
Instead of finishing the stories I start, I work between 30 and 60 hours a week, depending on how good or bad of a mood my boss is in, arranging and rearranging the personal life of a self-absorbed, overgrown teenager who more than keeps me on my toes.
Sarah McNay, PR consultant to the rich, successful and famous in the bustling city of Saint John, has been my best friend since we were at secondary school together, and I've been her personal assistant for as long as I can remember. Even in the days before I was her actual PA, I was organising her life for her, making sure that she didn't double book herself for dates, disposing of men she no longer had need or want for, and making sure that her hair appointment closely followed her nail appointment so that she would look utterly fabulous for whatever drink-fuelled event she had that night.
And she always does look utterly fabulous, too. Hair carefully coiffed into position, lashes longer than the line of besotted men she's always had eagerly vying for her attention, and teeth whiter and straighter than any I've seen before. In some ways, I envy Sarah, always looking the part, [almost] always acting the part, and somehow coming across devastatingly beautiful no matter the time of day. In others, though, I wonder how she manages to keep up with such an exhausting regime, and how she's done it for so long. I found it exhausting trying to keep all of her appointments in check in a diary, so I could only imagine how tiring it must be for her to have to flit from one salon to another, and then from one client to another, and then one bar or club or pub or restaurant to another, constantly feeling the pressure to look like something from a magazine cover.
Sarah is a high-maintenance character, that's for sure, and she takes up a lot (read: all) of my time, but I owe her everything. She has picked me up off of the floor after every truly heart-crushing breakup, offering me a bed to sleep in when I found myself packing my things and moving out of yet another lover's home, and even co-signing paperwork to make sure that I had a roof over my head when I was ready to rejoin the world and move out of the safety and comfort of her spare room. And then there's the whole guaranteed-job thing. A lot of people have a lot of negative things to say about Sarah, especially competitors in the business, but to me, she was loyal and always more than generous. In her words, I was the sister she never had.
It's actually all down to Sarah that I have this tale to tell.
"You should come out with me and the Escada Hotel girls tonight," she said, holding up two dresses in front of her: one bright pink, one navy blue, both very short and covered in sequins.
It had been her idea to open up a bottle of wine as we arranged her diary, and just like it always did when Sarah decided to pop open a bottle, it soon turned into one of those nights that would carry on until the early hours of the morning. If I went out with her, I'd end up rolling home at around the same time I should've been hopping in the shower to get ready for work, and then I'd be useless to everyone when I did eventually drag my fragile ass into the office. Sarah never suffered from hangovers, but she made sure that I more than made up for that. She also made sure that I suffered as much as possible, often being 100% more demanding than usual, for however long I felt like I was going to die for.
"I like the blue dress better. I'm not really up for it tonight, thanks though. I hope you have a great night. Just let me know if you need me to switch any of your morning appointments. Remember you have that 10:30 with that greasy club guy." I said as I held up a pair of the infamous Carrie Bradshaw Manolo Blahniks for her approval.
"I'll be fine," she replied, shaking her head at the shoes. "You're lonely. Why don't I go through my little black book again?"
She put both dresses back in her closet and picked out a racy little black Gucci number to try on instead, holding it up against her in front of the mirror before turning around to get another of my opinions that she'd inevitably ignore.
"Because the last person you set me up with was an alcoholic who liked to dabble in a little light cocaine abuse at the weekend. I'm in my thirties now, Sarah; that behaviour ain't cute. Plus, I don't have time to date. You take up all of my time, remember?" I poked my tongue out at her, but we both knew there was the tiniest hint of resentment peeking out from the edges of my words.
"They're not all like that!" she proclaimed. "Is this black dress too slutty?"
"Yes, but you'd look amazing in it." And I wasn't lying. I tried not to stare as she slipped the dress on over her body, but the skin-tight satin material stretching across her figure made it difficult not to. She had the kind of body that I, personally, would've killed for: a little waist, curvy hips, a butt that made men literally stop in their tracks. It certainly made me stop in my tracks, but after that one White Lightning-fuelled experimental kiss behind the science block at school, more than 16 years ago, we'd long since established that Sarah was one hundred percent heterosexual.
"You haven't been on a proper date in a long time. You can't just keep shagging your ex-boyfriends. What do you want? A relationship? Fuck buddy? Something in between?" She admired herself in the mirror as she talked, pointing one leg out in front of her, then the other, and then grabbing her phone to take a couple of photos.
"I don't know. A bit of fun with the potential to turn into something more if it feels right?" I shrugged as I focused my eyes on the pile of discarded outfits on the floor of her closet. It was the most honest answer I could come up with; I genuinely didn't know what I wanted, or if I even wanted anything at all. I just knew that I was lonely. I would talk to people all day long on the phone, and Sarah would flit in and out of the office during the day, and there were face-to-face meetings with clients — but they weren't the kind of social interactions that made you feel less lonely. Quite the opposite: they were the kind of interactions that made you feel more lonely.
At my age, people weren't dating and messing around anymore; that's how it felt to me. All of my friends, both male and female, were making babies, buying houses, building empires, jetting off around the world, or keeping themselves busy setting up yet another home business venture.
What was I doing with my life? Running around after my friend from high school, making sure she was one step ahead of the negative press and keeping unrelenting suitors at bay. I occasionally had time to socialise, to lazily stroll around shops at 3 pm on a random Tuesday afternoon, but I always found myself doing it alone. No one else was available at the drop of a hat when Sarah would ditch me for an afternoon of frolicking with some chap who would be the object of her obsession for a week or two.
People didn't have time to stop and chat these days. Or maybe they did and they just didn't want to stop and chat to me? Either way, I'd found myself forced out of several friendship groups I once considered myself to be a part of. It stung a little, but I tried not to dwell too much on it, preferring to believe that it was truly down to lifestyle changes that pulled me and some of my closest friends apart.
"You should sign up to ChattR anonymously." Sarah's voice pulled me from my thoughts.
"You can do that?"
"Totally. I've got an anonymous account to make sure the men I date aren't already dating someone else. You know how much I hate to be someone's side dish ..."
Sarah's voice trailed off as we both remembered that one time she found out that her latest beau was sleeping with one of the girls who worked the desk at their local swimming pool. Let's just say that someone got wet, someone got their car keyed, and someone ended up getting a caution from the police. It was an absolute PR disaster for a PR guru, but she handled it like a pro. It cost her a few thousand pounds, but luckily, swimming pool desk assistants don't get paid a great deal of money and are surprisingly easy to pay off. That one was, anyway.
Later on, once Sarah had finally decided on the right dress (yes: the black, "slutty" one) and made her way out into the night, I thought about what she'd said. Having a place where I could anonymously scream into the void about her when she pissed me off seemed like a really great option to have. Maybe it would help out with my loneliness, too? I liked the idea of being able to get involved with things - conversations, debates, trending topics, etc. - without even having to get up off my couch.
In-person social events had turned into a form of torture for me, a string of embarrassing questions reminding me just how much of a failure I was in the eyes of my peers:
When was I having kids?
Did I have a career of my own yet?
What was my love life looking like?
Had I found anyone to finally settle down with?
How about my taste in partners — had it improved since my last disastrous dalliance?
When the answer was always no, and the embarrassment of being a social failure even more burning than it had been at the last social event, I started to wonder why I even bothered to turn up to them at all; and then, eventually, I stopped bothering. I would turn down 95% of the invitations that were extended my way, and then blow out the 5% of events I actually did agree to turn up to, and then I wondered why people no longer bothered inviting me to events or places at all.
It was a social meltdown all of my own making, but it didn't make the sting of loneliness any less painful.
I missed having someone to talk to at the end of a long day — actual face-to-face conversations. The kind of conversations where you can read expressions and interpret hand gestures and read the little signs between the lines. I missed the feeling of closeness you have when you can reach out and just touch someone on the arm as you're talking to them, a fleeting moment of contact that somehow manages to convey so much. And more than anything else, I missed the comforting feeling of having someone to come home to, be it a partner, a relative, or just a roommate. I loved my own space more than most, but two years of it had been long enough for me. Two years ago was the last time I was in a relationship that offered me that comforting come-home feeling, and as much as I could probably call on any one of my ex-boyfriends to scratch an itch, sometimes it wasn't just a scratch I needed.
And the thought of being anonymous online ... well, that's what piqued my interest the most. I could be anyone I wanted behind an anonymous account. Anyone at all. I still wanted to be me, of course, but I wanted to be me with no pressure, no restrictions, no one I actually knew to pull me up on how bitchy I was being about my friends.
I'd long since abandoned my own personal social media accounts, especially once I'd started running Sarah's business ones. With quite a large following behind her, it wasn't unusual for her to get the odd troll comment from time to time, and they always focused on her appearance — her breasts too big, her lips too thin, her hair too bouncy, her feet too misshapen. I always deleted those comments before she had the chance to see them, but each one stung me a little more. In my eyes, Sarah was about as close to perfection as anyone could get. If even she fell victim to trolls online, the rest of us - and especially regular plain Janes like me - had no hope of escaping the vitriol. If her lips were too thin, my measly offerings definitely would be.
Pushing the thought of internet trolls out of my mind, I grabbed my phone and set up a totally anonymous Chattr account, giving myself the user name 'anon~girl' because it felt apt at the time (and I'd had two bottles of wine and any hint of imagination had gone out of the window).
Within a couple of hours, I'd found a whole community of people just like me: anonymous (or close to it), looking for some like-minded people to talk to, throwing around confidence-boosting compliments like they were a dime a dozen. I'm not going to lie, it felt great to find and then be included in that uplifting, flirty group of people. It felt like I'd found my people. My crew. A circle of beautiful and different personalities who would lift me up when I was at my very lowest. I could say anything (within reason), about anyone. I could moan about my mother or my boss, complain about how stupid my friends were being, or just have a rant about something that had buggered up my day, all without having to worry about someone I actually knew reading it.
It felt amazing — very freeing.
And that's where my story starts: with a random private message, on a completely anonymous social media account.
It's hardly the starting point for a great fairy tale romance, is it?
Or is it ... ?
-------------------------------
Did you enjoy Chapter 1 of User Unknown?
Let me know!
Leave me a comment, hit the vote button, or add my story to your reading list — I'd really flippin' appreciate it!
🖤 Thank you! 🖤
-------------------------------