Sorry seems to be the hardest word

I've been discommunicated from blogworld for the last two weeks (not that anybody will have noticed) THROUGH NO FAULT OF MY OWN other than, to quote the words of the Buzzcocks, by having fallen in love with someone I shouldn't've fallen in love in love with someone ever fallen in love in love with someone I shouldn't've fallen in love with. Which is quite appropriate somehow as the object of my MISPLACED love (if that's what it was) happens to have a compulsive repetitive speech disorder, and this is pretty much the way she actually talks. But that and the Tourette's were always going to make kissing an unpredictable experience.

This is just one aspect of a very complex spectrum of learning difficulties she has actually, now I've mentioned it. OK, I know what you're thinking. When we first met at the youth club (it's a day centre actually, but I only go in the evenings) I thought we'd got a lot in common (my spectrum's probably less colourful than hers). The main things we have in common are 1) that we both dislike authority (I'm often thought the Tourette's is never half as bad as she makes out), and 2) for some reason we've both found it quite difficult to get a girlfriend/boyfriend up to now. So for at least two reasons and probably more if I could be bothered to think about them, which I can't because the whole thing is still just too PAINFUL, we seemed made for each other. I'm sure a lot of people who go through difficult SEPARATIONS look back and think the same. How wrong they are!

Anyway, when she read the blog I wrote, about the night I'd suspected her of cheating on me and meeting someone else outside the cinema and I'd gone to check up on her and run into Robbie Williams in the Co-op instead, she had a fit. I don't mean she was mad with me, I mean she had a fit, full on, thrashing about on the floor eye-rolling pissing herself fit. This was in the library of all places, because she's not allowed to use the computer at home. They had to call the ambulance. While she was in the hospital waiting for her mum to pick her up she sent me a horrible threatening text which I'm not going to repeat. But then you don't take threats to injure you all that seriously when they come from a self-harmer, do you? Like if she'd said I hate you so much I'm going to carve your name in my arm with a compass point I'd have thought she meant it. She'd got as far as the E in Jed last time, after all. As it was I just went to bed.

The next afternoon, I'd just got home from school and she showed up just as I was about to start doing my geography project. I'd got my laptop open and it was all just loading up. Mum had let her in and she'd come up to my room, and the first thing I knew she was standing behind me. She hadn't said anything, and when I realised there was someone there it made me jump. I was just turning round when her left hand came round my face and I felt her smear all this stickiness in my eyes. Next thing I heard a noise like a wet fart and all this cold wetness spread over the back of my hands, which were still on the keyboard of my laptop. And then she laughed, this mad, out of control inhuman laugh, like Stacey Solomon when she gets voted through to the next round on X factor. Next thing I knew, mum was in the room and my mad ex-girlfriend was sitting on the bed, shaking. I couldn't open my eyes, they didn't hurt, but I physically couldn't prise them open, and as I rubbed my hands together bits of skin seemed to be coming off them like a badly made up extra in the Thriller video. It all lasted a split second, and then the panic and her laughing then crying and my mum shouting what's going on, what's going on?

As if I knew. I thought I'd been blinded. But after a few seconds I realised I wasn't in pain, it wasn't burning and whatever it was she'd smeared all over me wasn't life threatening. Far from being burned and disfigured for life, it wasn't even going to clear up my eczema. The familiar smell was the first clue, a strong Salt and Vinegar crisp smell, and then the tackiness and the way the skin on the backs of my hands and my face began to tighten and go shiny and wrinkly like an old man's. It was PVA glue, not the sort of glue you sniff and get hooked on but the sort you spread on your hands and let dry and then peel off when you've nothing better to do. She'd got it all over my face, my hands and down my front, and now as she sat on my bed, her head in her hands and shaking uncontrollably, all matted in her hair as well. All she could say was ss-orr ss-orr ssss-orr, which wasn't even a proper apology. My mum stayed with her while I went to wash it out of my eyes and my dad phoned her mum to come and get her.

While I could wash it out of my eyes and peel it off my hands, I couldn't get it off the keyboard. It had gone right through the gaps between the keys and into the works, and the laptop was totally wrecked. Mum tried to encourage me by saying that we could get it replaced on the insurance, but I could tell by my dad's face that the insurance people had probably never even heard of us, let alone be prepared to pay out. I didn't even ask him. So that was my Fatal Attraction moment, and why it has taken three weeks for me to get a new (well I say new, secondhand out of The Cornishman, £120) laptop.

So next, having posted this blog, I'm going to change my status on facebook to single. But cautious.