Diary of a slightly mad, single mummy

Last night I found out via a social networking website that my first love had been taken to hospital with meningitis.

I was 15 when I met him at Waterloo Station - an encounter that marked the beginning of a love affair that would take us literally to the end of the world.

Despite not having been together for seven years, we have remained in contact by email. We have spent the past seven years like a like a pair of compasses; where one roams, the other follows their path from afar, yet still irrevocably connected. There have been times where we haven’t emailed for six-months and others where we have emailed constantly for a week.

I was 15 when I met him at Waterloo Station - an encounter that marked the beginning of a love affair that would take us literally to the end of the world.

With a wild teenage desire it was a relationship that grew more passionate with age, submerging us into a make-believe world of abrupt closeness. At 16 we moved in together and at 18 we decided to leave everyone we knew and travel the world.

We had an intense relationship that incorporated an obsessive, overwhelming desire for each other. I was still a teenager when we stepped onto Australian soil with only each other and our backpacks for company, but just looking at him filled my body with that teenage electrical jolt one gets when the phone rings from their lover, so I felt safe. But with us both guilty of too much roller coaster substance coursing through our veins it’s no wonder the trip ended in heartbreak a year later.

When I read that he was in hospital my stomach instantly tied in knots - a feeling I couldn’t understand. I was desperate to find out how he was and spent the entire night waking up in panic. It’s now the next day and my only way of tracking his progress is by checking mutual friend’s status updates on the website. I’ve emailed him, which is silly seeing as he’s in hospital. But it’s a hard, weird situation I have found myself in; especially as I doubt anyone on his side knows he’s still in contact with me. He’s in a long-term relationship, as am I, and we don’t even know each other’s phone numbers.

But regardless of all of that I have still managed to find out not only what hospital he’s in, but what ward he’s staying in. As a ghost from seven years ago I doubt that turning up at the hospital would go down well with his girlfriend, over-protective mother, and my own boyfriend. In reverse circumstances, I’m sure he wouldn’t be as stressed about me.

I expect this will be part of the emotional story I will tell a 16-year-old Summer when she yells at me that I’m too old to understand love - a statement I shouted at my own mother when she said we were too young to live together...

I guess now all I can do is wait for that email.

For more information on Laura visit www.laurapauley.com.

Laura's book, My Summer Bump is available here.

Follow Laura on twitter @LauraPauley