Women rule the world. They determine whether we shall be happy, angry, sad or miserable. You can pretend that women don’t influence you, but I have come to accept it that there is very little that we men do, that is not directly influenced by women.

It’s really pathetic, isn’t it? And what makes it worse is the fact that we can’t control ourselves when we get desperate.

The particular woman holding annoyingly great sway over me is Carole. Carole has had me sleepless for the past two weeks, and I cannot even begin to count the number of times, I have vowed to move on and leave Carole alone. I am certain she doesn’t want me anymore.

The fact that she has been spotted a number of times in the company of the same guy tells it all; she and I are history, she and that guy are the future. But then, I know that am terribly addicted to Carole, I just can’t walk away.
She called me the other day.

She wanted to talk. I was with another girl. I left her and run off to Carole citing a family emergency. The fact that I had called Carole hundreds of times, and she hadn’t answered or returned any of those calls didn’t stop me from running to her when she called me once.

I had even gone to her house, and she had refused to let me in. But there I was, like she was doing me a favour by telling me she wanted to see me.

She absolutely refused to discuss the guy. She refused to tell me if she loved him, if she was going to stay with him, if she had actually left me for him.

Even when I got really desperate, she only told me she wasn’t talking about him, period! I asked her why she wasn’t picking my calls and she said it’s because we had nothing to talk about. I did have a lot to talk about with her.

She was my girlfriend for crying out loud. I needed her like I needed the air I breathed. While I told her about the hard time I was going thru because of her, she only flinched a little, and that was it.

Then she asked me why I was still running after other girls if I loved only her. And I lied to her. I told her I had not talked to a single girl ever since she left me three weeks ago. She looked at me with disbelief, and I had just sworn that it was true when a text came thru on my phone. She got my phone, it was right there on the table.

She read the message, and passed the phone back to me. From the look of disgust on her face, it was obvious the text was from a girl. But I hadn’t imagined it could be from that girl, the girl I had left at my place. OMG! I had told that girl to leave. But the message said, "I’ll wait for you to come back, if you are not taking long”.

I saw the last little flame Carole might have held for me flicker out and die. For all it was worth, I might have stood up there and then and left. But I stuck on. I tried to explain that it was a wrong message.

But she wasn’t buying. She suggested I leave. I offered to stay, but she said it wasn’t a good idea. I offered to drop her off, but she said she was waiting for someone. I left, and drove off, drove round the building and came back and packed. I stayed in the car, waiting to see who would pick her up.

 The guy came twenty minutes later. I was gripped by a sudden madness of jealousy and hatred for the guy that I had to grab the steering wheel hard, to prevent myself, from running out and murdering the guy. They left hand in hand, he opened for her the car door and she got in. I realized that I had never done that for Carole.

But, hey, I had done very many other nice things for her. I had bought her a really nice dinner dress. I thought of following them to see where they go, but I dismissed the idea. That was being too desperate.

So, I drove instead to Martin’s house. I didn’t want to go back to my flat; I didn’t want to see the girl waiting for me there. At Martin’s, that’s where I saw Cathy for the very first time.

Ends