EPTTo give you some idea, i will relay here a few of the texts i sent my girlfriend in the last 4 hours while she was (and still is) asleep:
- 02:24 Club is closing already
i think we are going home now. Xxxxx- 03:34 I might die tonight. I love you. I'm sorry that this text will scare you. Xxxxxxxx
- 03:43 I'm sorry I scared you. I'm on the [way] home now [in] the taxi. Xxxxxx
- 03:44 I just needed to tell you that i loved you just [in] case. Xxxxxx
The words in brackets are what i meant to write although it turns out, that on re-reading predictive text betrayed me yet again.
Now, what happened between 02:24 and 03:43 is what this blog is about. In short (TL:DR) form, i spent that time running away from someone who has, over the last 9 months, become one of my closest friends. Sad but true.
I have never claimed to be one of the bravest people in the world, but i do have rules that i set for myself which i ALWAYS follow. The rule that most commonly comes into play is that i will never let a girl walk home on her own if there is any way i can avoid it. This might sound unnecessarily sexist, but i decided to make that rule when my friend told me about what happened to a friend of his and i have stuck to it ever since. Another one of my rules is that if a friend is incapable of looking after themselves i will not let them down. Nothing is worse than hearing those stories of the guy who froze to death in a field one night when he was drunk. His friends assumed he would be fine and the next day he was found dead. I give this example because it happened on my university campus last year.
So, to tonight. The 9 of us who left this evening were still together at half past two when we left the club, which is already a plus, unfortunately, one of the group was overly drunk. His name is Liam, and he is the only reason that i have got along with the people in my block in halls at university. The way he has done this is the following: He gets on more or less with everyone in the block, he is friends with me, therefore everyone in the block respects that i am his friend and thus i am accepted into whichever group is current sat around chatting.
I cannot stress enough just how much harder my life at university so far would have been without him. Unfortunately, he has his own problems, namely, binge drinking and violent behaviour when under the influence of drugs/alcohol. As you can imagine, this isn't a healthy combination. Back to the present (or more correctly the recent-past): someone in the group ordered two taxis to take us back home to uni, which was a 15 minute taxi ride or a 2 hour walk, so we had to calm Liam down and persuade him to come with us to the Bus station where we would get the taxi. This was harder than it sounds, to the extent that we never managed it.
After 10 minutes of my (built like a man who lifts cars) friend Jean trying to relax him, which i suppose devolved into pure intimidation, in the hope that he could persuade Liam to calm down, half of the group had gone, and there was only 4 of us remaining: me, Jean, Lucy and Liam. At this point Liam decides it is time to take off. He simply runs away. Lucy was in heels and Jean has fallen back to letting Liam be self destructive if he wants to be, which left me. I couldn't let him go. A while back (just before Christmas) when he was in a similar state, i was with some friends and i was enjoying myself, and when Liam disappeared i just assumed he would be fine and thought no more about it. Until the next morning, when i found out he had been arrested for attempting to break into our own block, and starting a fight with a passer by, and had ended up in hospital having his stomach pumped. I had felt awful, i had broken one of my own rules, which had led to my friend almost ruining his life and being thrown out of university. Who knows what would have happened if the police hadn't happened to drive by and stop him from attacking the poor guy in the street.
So i ran after him, with no idea what i would do. A month ago i badly sprained my ankle while mountaineering, (although i actually only fell from about a metre and a half off the ground), and since i have been unable to run any decent distance without pain, so i had no idea how long i would be able to do this in my slightly intoxicated state. Luckily for me i didn't have to... yet. I quickly caught up with him, what with him being drunk, and me being if not for my ankle quite a strong runner, but he decided to turn on me after a short while of my trying to persuade him to come back to the bus stop so we could get a taxi home. To cut a long story short he ended up hitting me in the face twice, as well as pushing me around a lot, all the while i was asking him what was he doing and telling him that i wasn't going to leave him no matter how much he told me to or threatened me.
After learning what happened if i tried to physically confront him (and we shall see how these bruises look in the morning), i simply kept backing up, until i reached a distance where he decided to run to catch me. At this point apparently he was seeing red, and all he could think about was catching me. So hear i was, about five to three by now, literally running for my life while my friend was shouting death threats at me from down the street. Thankfully the adrenaline was killing any pain that i should have been getting in my ankle, and i was able to properly run for the first time in weeks, which was an amazing feeling, because i love to run, and i had been planning on running the Berlin marathon in September until i hurt it, which put a definitive stop to my training.
The only plan i had was that eventually he would get bored/tired/sober enough to realise what he was doing and stop, but it didn't seem to be happening. Each time i got too far ahead i would stop to check he was still following, and if he wasn't i would approach, and as soon as he noticed me i would have to run again. I sent that second text to Hannah while i was running. He was literally promising to kill me as soon as he caught me.
Eventually i got to a dead end, where i was forced to climb a fence into quite a large road, so that i could cross and maintain a safe distance. In doing so, he, in his drunken state lost track of where i was, so i crouched down behind some traffic fences on the other side of the road, and watched him to check that nothing bad happened to him, preparing to phone a taxi once he passed out. After a few minutes a police car drove up behind me, and i was startled by the voice of one of the officers asking me what exactly i was doing. I must have looked pretty damn suspicious hiding and spying from behind a traffic fence.
The last thing i wanted was for my friend to spend the night in a prison cell, so i tried to persuade them to leave us be and go away, but they wouldn't. He asked where my friend was, drove over which prompted Liam (who comes from a poor area where nobody trusts the police in the slightest), to get up and completely change his mood. Instantaneously he was the same old slightly drunk Liam the Conspirator, walking away from the car with an arm over my shoulder saying that we should just walk away and not say anything. The policemen simply turned the car around as i explained that i would order us a taxi home now, and made to leave, keeping to their word after i'd begged them not to arrest him. Just before they left i quickly stopped them to ask exactly where we were, as the running had taken us quite a long distance, and i was in part of the city that i had never been before, and the Policeman informed me, smiled, and then drove away.
I would like to thank those to policemen, for helping us on what was the scariest night of my life, when i spent the whole time fearing for myself, my friend, and everyone around us.
It is now 6:03, and i think i will probably do without sleep now, until the exhaustion from adrenaline knocks me out completely.
I learnt a lot about myself tonight, and i just wanted to share it with others so that i would never forget it.
Thanks for reading.
