I’ve mentioned this fucking Christmas present like, 4 times on this blog already. So I feel like it’s only right to let you all in on the eventual demise of the Christmas present.

After I had arranged to meet him on the High Street to hand over his gift and he didn’t show, I lost my temper with me. It was so disrespectful that he couldn’t commit 20 seconds of his life to show up, receive this gift and drive off again. So I told him if we couldn’t arrange a time and place to hand the thing over then I’d either leave it somewhere for him to collect or that I’d donate the thing to charity.

He said he understood. But he was also still unavailable to meet me. So I decided to leave it in the place where we met a couple of times. I half hid it in some bushes and thought it might be inconspicuous there? I don’t know. I took a picture of it and sent it over to him. I even delayed leaving it in the bushes because he said he was away for work the previous day. Whatever, I said. Here’s what it is.

He said he’d try his best to collect it. I decided that I’d change my dog’s afternoon walk to avoid checking if it had been collected all that day. But the next day, I took a lunchtime walk in order to walk past it. To see if he’d collected it or not. I figured he hadn’t as surely he would have messaged if he’d collected it?

Instead when I got there, the gift was not in the bushes. It was nowhere. But there was a bin not far away, and with a sinking feeling I looked in it. And the wrapping paper was there towards the top. I knew the answer already but I messaged him anyway to ask if he’d picked up the gift? He messaged back to say no, he hadn’t managed to.

I was so disappointed. I wanted to be rid of it because I didn’t want to have something else weighing down my mental load. But I also wanted him to get the thing. For that to be some reaction. A thank you, maybe. Instead I got nothing.

Before this all happened I had lied to him to say it had been so long since I’d bought it that I’d forgotten what it was. But that was untrue. I was mostly saying that to downplay its importance, to make all seem a bit casual and like it was no big deal.

But it was a big deal to me. And I felt ragey knowing that someone else had opened my gift to him and did whatever they did with it. I’m ragey that he’ll never know what it is. That the build up I had to whatever his reaction would be to it is lost to me forever. I’m ragey that the next time I think to buy a gift for someone else that I’ll remember how this felt and might just reconsider to save the hassle.