The phone rang again. It was an unknown +227 number trying to call me through Whatsapp. I hadn’t answered so they were trying again. Two messages later, I blocked them!
I took your phone number off Instagram and I find your words very interesting.
According to google, the call was coming from West Africa. I don’t want to seem uncaring, but why would a guy reach out to me in Australia from West Africa via phone call?! What was his agenda? I am interesting, that much is true, but I’m sure there is other interesting people in Africa. If he was trying to engage with me because I’m single, there’s a lot of single people closer dude. This will not work out. I’ll never know. This one time that someone tried to contact me from West Africa, I blocked them!
This one time I went on a date in the park. We brought our dogs along and walked and chatted. It was great! No awkward eye contact as we just strolled on as our dogs ran around. They weren’t really the right size to play with each other but they were both females so everyone was getting along. At one point, his dog was playing with another Staffordshire Bull Terrier and he had to call it back. Close call, or so I thought. He text me the next day:
I’ve had to take Tara to the vet. She was bitten on the head at the park. The wound has been bleeding and infected.
I sent back empathetic pleasantries and asked about his dog again a few days later. I never heard from him again! I didn’t bite his dog…
Last weekend I was stood up!
We arranged to meet around 9pm and when I left my house I messaged my old friend that after travelling by public transport I’d get to the venue at 9:50pm. She said no problem…. yep, it was a girl friend. She knew I was travelling into the city by myself but when I arrived, she wasn’t at the bar we had planned to meet at and wasn’t responding to my messages. 30 mins later she contacted me with a reply to one of my first messages…. not answering ‘where are you’?
I text everyone else that would respond. It was a real low point as a single girl. To have gone to the effort of getting ready, head out by myself, 50 mins into the city and then standing alone at night. Luckily I had a number of friends that offered me moral support. So I had a beer by myself and listened to a busker before I decided to head home. It took my friend that I was meant to meet another hour to ask me where I was?! She was heading to a different bar now. I didn’t want to chase her around the city, I was done.
It just so happens that one of the people I reached out to that texted me back was a new guy friend. We are going to catch up this weekend…
My Life in the Ocean 