35. Goodbye Amber

It's been a while since I have written. I needed a break from everything that was going on, and I needed a break from Amber, the table dancing,vodka swilling, next to nothing wearing party girl that had taken over my life. I always said that Amber would take a backseat in my life, be my alter ego. Well now she IS me! I am rarely myself, am hardly at home or with the friends that have loved me through thick and thin. Instead I spend my days and nights with promoters, party girls and minor celebrities (not the good kind).

This all came about after I was offered a free weekend in Africa to go to a party. Carlton was organising it and I jumped at the chance! A free trip to a continent I have never been to, a fabulous party and two whole nights of uninterruped sex with Carlton! Yes please. However my rose-tinted glasses soon fell off in the pool I jumped in when I got drunk at said party as I began to see Carlton's true colours. He's an insecure, posessive and jealous man who can be quite irrational and petty.

Ok, so maybe I knew this all along but it took something big - something like this weekend to make me realise. I won't go into details as it's all too confusing but basically he told me not to even speak to another man while I was there (hello, that's why we got to go there - to mingle!) and then when we all were talking to some guys we met by the pool that day he flipped... slowly.

First we went back to the hotel and he was quiet, then we had the most amazing sex ever (I now realise it's because he knew this would be the last time, how cruel) then he got MAD. He accused me of randomly SLEEPING with two men actually AT the party! What?!? He has serious issues. I knew this before of course, as this has happened when we've been in clubs in London - a guy says hello to me and all of a sudden I've been secretly seeing him for a year and we have a love-child together. He makes up some funky shit in his brain! The only thing was that this time, I was alone in an African country with a man that now despised me. Let's just say the next 24 hours was like a year-long therapy session that really made me re-evaluate my life and what it had become. Ok so yes, I went to the hottest parties, got everything free and went to places most people could only dream of, but was that what I wanted forever? I had unknowingly cut out the most important people in my life, my family and my best friends.

As I sat in the airport terminal waiting for the plane to take me back to London I began thinking about if I had died that weekend. What would the last couple of months of my life have been like? Spent with people who only cared about you because you were guaranteed to make their table look 'hot'. I hadn't seen my friends from college for over two months and I can't remember the last time I had a good conversation with my mum and the fact shocked me.

I returned to the UK with the resolve to change myself, just as I changed myself into party-girl Amber. I was going to dump anyone who didn't give a crap about me and spend alot more time with the people that did.

When people say they went to Africa and it changed their life, they usually mean they cared for aids orphans for a year, but really I just went for a two-day party. The effect however was strangely very much the same.