What can I tell you about this time in my life? Well, I guess everyone’s got a moment where it all seems to go a bit pear-shaped for one reason or another. For me, it was the two years that followed me bumping into this one boy. Looking back, I think of this whole time now as the dip in my life, so that’s what we’ll call him, The Dip.
He was from Essex. He was two years older than me and he was one of them cheeky, cocky boys from the area.
He walked into Nu Bar and we were introduced. He’d just got a brand new car, a big 4X4, and the other boys were all taking the mickey. He was being all flirty and that to me, and then he offered to drop me off in his brand new shiny car. If the worst mistake I ever made was meeting this boy, then probably the worst decision I ever made was accepting that lift home.
A few days later, he took me on a date to… Virgin Active, as you do. We couldn’t get in the pool area, so we ended up playing crazy golf instead. I thought, ‘This kid’s mad,’ but I loved it – he was just different from anyone else I’d come across. We clicked pretty instantly and that was it. I don’t know why it all happened so quickly, but by the time we’d been on a few more dates, I was completely in love with him. Looking back, I’m really not sure why – he was a little prick most days, but it didn’t stop me.
It was a really confusing time. We’d have a great time together, hanging out by ourselves, but then he’d go out with the boys and be a massive flirt. When I was working shifts at Nu Bar, people would come in and start telling me he was being flirty around loads of girls.
Whenever I went back to him with it, I should have listened more carefully when he told me, ‘I don’t want a girlfriend. You and I are SEEING each other.’ He kept telling me, but I didn’t want to hear it. I should have seen the signs, but I was just so happy to be hanging out with him. I can remember lying in his room, cuddling up to him, then turning over and silently crying because of that nervous feeling in my stomach, not knowing if he was actually mine, hoping he was but scared I was kidding myself.
One night, I walked into the bar to start my shift, and a boy came straight over to me and asked if I was still seeing The Dip. When I said yes, he showed me a text message he’d got from some blondie on holiday. In her text, she’d written to him, ‘Someone just said [The Dip] is with a girl with brown hair in Nu Bar. What’s going on?’
I thought, ‘Hang on. I’M the girl with the brown hair, but who the hell is this blondie?!’
I rang The Dip straight away and asked him, ‘Who is she?’ Well, apparently, it was some girl he used to see who he was having trouble getting rid of. Bollocks. The truth was, he was still sleeping with her. I was so stupid. If I was seeing him about twice a week, she clearly was too.
As a result of that disaster, did I immediately dump him? Did I listen to my mates and my mum, and never speak to him again? Er, no. Instead, we became official. For fuck’s sake.
I do think he loved me in his own special way and knew I was a bit more important to him than he realised, but the boy just couldn’t help himself. We decided to give it a go, but the experience changed me a lot as a person. When anyone goes on about my temper, my mum always says that I was completely ‘normal’ (whatever that is), polite and well-behaved until I started meeting boys, or should I say, started coming up against boys who promised me one thing and then went behind my back and did the opposite. I do believe it’s enough to drive any girl a bit mad being treated like that, and then the girls get a really bad rep for not being able to handle that kind of treatment. Why SHOULD they be able to handle it? What about the boys who dish it out? Anyway… I agree with my mum, and I would say the change in me happened once I made that shit decision to ‘become official’ with The Dip.
We’d decided to give it a proper go, but I became constantly paranoid about where he was and who he was with. Someone told me once, ‘He’s got his arm around a blonde girl,’ and I phoned him to check. Next thing I knew, he came flying into the bar, he had a fight and he told me it was a lie, all of which convinced me it couldn’t possibly be true. Er… I don’t think he was shagging other girls, but I just never felt like I was that one special girl for him. It was a shame, because it knocked all the confidence out of me, which I’d finally got back after what I’d gone through with Mr Venezuela. He always seemed to ask questions like, ‘What were you up to last night?’ – which I realise now was a sign of his own doubts. One evening, we walked into the bar together and he pecked a girl on the lips, but if I even smiled at some other bloke, he could get nasty. He left me in tears so many times.
My mum didn’t like him at all, as she could see what my relationship with him was doing to me. Sometimes, he’d surprise her and be really nice, but overall, there were just too many dramas surrounding him. I was moody with my family, or I’d get sent home from work. I wasn’t doing myself any favours there – I was rowing with other girls, shouting at them from across the bar, always blaming the girl, never him. Why do we do that?
Nu Bar wasn’t going so well for me by now, bearing in mind I was always either crying, shouting or being sent home. The Dip had broken up with me by now, but don’t get me wrong, I was still running around there and sleeping with him. Then one night, a few girls came into the bar and walked straight up to me. One said, ‘Look, Megan, we were at a house party of The Dip’s the other week, and he didn’t do anything, you have nothing to worry about. I feel for you, I’ve been heartbroken myself.’ She even took me outside for a heart to heart and I told her everything that was going wrong between us. Well, guess what? It turned out she was banging him. In fact, turns out she’d banged him and her best pal had given him a blow job.
Another evening, I got into another fight with two other girls. I remember having my hair pulled, and Lauren managing to pull me away from them. She was shouting at me, ‘Look at yourself, look what he’s done to you.’
I was a mess. I have no idea why he had such a hold over me – I couldn’t even tell you anything that was so special. All I can say is that he was everything to me. He made me laugh, he could be quite caring when we were on our own, but that was it.
Things came to a head one night. As usual, we were in Nu Bar, and, as usual, The Dip and I were giving each other a hard time. I thought he said something horrible in my direction, so I threw everything within reach at him across the bar – yeah, that’s right, every single drink I could see I dashed at him – until the bouncers came and picked me up to get me out of there. You know things have turned pretty bad when bouncers who are employed to get rid of the messiest customers have to actually throw out one of the bar staff. How embarrassing.
On my way out, two girls walked in, and – I’ll never be sure why they did this to me, considering I was quite clearly already broken – one of the girls punched me in the face. Don’t ask me why, but her mate joined in – she pulled my hair from the back of me and I ended up on the floor. The bouncers picked me back up, but I was screaming. By now the lights had gone on throughout the bar, the music had stopped and everyone was staring. The bouncers were doing their best to hold me down, trying to calm me, but I was a lunatic. I lied and told them I was fine so they would let me go. Then, I ran out onto the street and screamed, ‘Where are they?’
I was running around the streets of Loughton on my own, with my friends coming after me. The Dip had disappeared by now, he clearly didn’t care what happened to me, but I was also past caring about myself, by the looks of things. I was in such a rage, I didn’t realise I’d accidentally bumped into the wrong group of people outside somewhere. It turned into a huge fight – some of The Dip’s friends tried to help me, but I got pulled to the floor. I remember my face hitting the kerb – my nose was grazed and my hands covered in grit. The police arrived, sat me down on the steps and just looked at me while I sat shouting at them. They threatened to put me in a cell for the night if I didn’t pipe down. By now, it was three o’clock in the morning and I was very, very low.
I woke up in my own bed at home with a sore head and a very bruised heart. I wanted to watch the CCTV from the bar, to try to understand how it had all got so far out of hand. I saw myself arguing with The Dip, drinking and being so out of control, but the worst part of the footage was when he just walked away, while I was standing in the bar screaming. I had been so affected by someone who just didn’t care, and it made me really sad. As for the fight, well the footage confirmed what I already knew. At least that hadn’t been my fault, so I reported it to the police, but eventually I let it go.
Me and him and our toxic relationship didn’t just go wrong in Essex either. Towards the end of it all, I decided to move to Marbella with a friend to get away from everything. I got a job at Tibu Nightclub right by the beach and it all seemed to be going okay, but guess who turned up on a boys’ holiday? Mr Dip himself. I was walking along the strip in a yellow bikini and wedges when I spotted him. I couldn’t believe it, but I walked over and he just said, ‘All right, Meg?’ like we were back in Nu Bar. All pretty predictable. We both got drunk, had a huge row that got me sacked from Tibu, screamed at each other, slept with each other and promised to get back together – PROPERLY this time.
I was in Marbella for a month – I was meant to stay for the whole season, but the next morning I rang my mum and told her I was coming home early. There were auditions for The X Factor brewing at this point, but that wasn’t the real reason. Deep down, I wanted to come back to be with The Dip again.
Before I flew home, I went to his hotel, and a girl – the same girl who’d slept with him, and then pretended to be my friend – was in the foyer. I thought I recognised her but I wasn’t sure. As I was walking up to her, I thought she looked a bit strange, a bit… white, and as I got up close, I realised it was because she was covered in fire extinguisher foam. She swore at me, just as she was being thrown out by the hotel bouncers. I carried on up to his room, but when I got to his floor, I could see the whole corridor was covered in fire extinguisher foam, the same white foam I’d just seen all over the girl. I walked along the corridor, thinking, ‘Please don’t let it be his room, please don’t let it be his.’ But of course it was. There he was, naked in his room, with fire extinguisher foam all over him. And what did I do? Did I walk away? No, I slept with him.
Looking back, I think The Dip treating me so badly turned me into a bit of a psycho, which probably made him even more distant. One time when I was staying with him, I went through his phone and I found a message from another girl saying, ‘Are you coming to see me this weekend?’ I woke him up, and he said he never went to meet her, but I ended up getting the girl’s number and calling her up. She said he didn’t come to meet her. Okay, he never went through with these actions, but fuck me, why do this in the first place? He clearly couldn’t help himself. I had to phone my mum and ask her to come and get me. On the way home in the car, she was fuming and she said, ‘You’re never seeing that boy again, look what he’s turned you into.’
She was right. I needed help. I was doing anything I could think of just to get his attention. It wasn’t normal behaviour. I was turning up at his house at four o’clock in the morning – paying a cabbie to drive me all the way from mine to his, turning up at his parents’ house, knocking on his door and shouting, ‘Please can you let me in?’ At first, he’d say, ‘Fuck off, Meg, you psycho,’ but eventually he’d let me in. Then we’d sleep together, even though I knew he didn’t really want to be with me. He wanted to be single, he’d told me that, and it was a terrible feeling, having sex with someone, loving them so much, but knowing that feeling’s not coming back at you. I wanted everything with him, and he didn’t want any of it, but I just didn’t care. I was obsessed.
In case anyone reading this sorry tale hasn’t got the message loud and clear by now, I want to spell it out to any girls who might be going through something similar in their own lives: get out now. Find someone who treats you better.
You need to get out now before you get in even more trouble and your self-esteem sinks even lower than you thought possible. Trust me, there is no worse feeling than crying on your own, coming home drunk, throwing up and being picked up by your parents because you can’t look after yourself, all because you’ve been brought so low by heartbreak.
It scares me now, the thought of how I behaved, how badly I treated my body as well as my head. Maybe on some level I thought that if I suffered enough and I was dramatic enough, The Dip would eventually come running. But now I realise the world doesn’t work like that.
Our relationship lasted two-and-a-half years in total. It was far too long a time for something that took over my life.
Finally, I went to his house one night after yet another argument. As usual, all I wanted was for him to love me like I loved him, but on this occasion, the argument got so bad that eventually his mum came upstairs because of all the screaming. She told us to stop – she said, ‘You’re not right together.’
The tipping point came when I was sacked from Nu Bar because of that night, for throwing the drinks, and also calling the head bouncer a fat c**t. So that was that. I was asked to leave. A few weeks later, I begged for my job back, and the new owners agreed to let me come back on the condition that I tidied up my act, and apologised to the bouncer.
It was time to get my shit together.