Prologue
April 3rd 2011
Dear Diary,
Hello. My name is Lei. I am a 30 year old British single gal living in Marmaris, Turkey. I am a vegetarian and a vodka lover. This season I have chosen to be platinum blond. I am 5ft 6, I currently weigh in at 9st 2 and I do not have a flat stomach.
Vices: Cigarettes and Vodka.
I have not kept a diary since I was 14 years old. It ended very badly with my Mum reading it and circling all the paragraphs that she did not agree with. This was highly embarrassing for me as I had detailed every last thing that I had been getting up to with my boyfriend at the time, and she bloody well circled those bits too. #Mortified
Mum if you are reading this now then I suggest that you put this down immediately. I predict if last night was anything to go by, then this diary may give you an effing heart attack.
Anyway, I have decided to write this now as firstly my Mum does not live in the same country as me and secondly, in most single gal’s lives, there comes a time when one needs to step up and keep a diary of sorts to start documenting one’s shenanigans to see where I am going wrong.
With this being my final summer of vodka and all, you could say now is a good a time as any.
This summer is going to be a big deal for me. This is the summer that is going to be the end of all my single gal ways. It is to be the end of an era, a mark in my life.
This summer I am going to find the one.
Yes dear diary, I have made it my main goal and my only aim; the only thing I plan to accomplish this summer is to find my man. This is the guy that is going to sweep me off my feet, the one that I will fondly refer to as my other half, fuck it, let’s be cheesy and roll with ‘my soul mate’.
I believe that it’s high time to stop all the pissing about, partying and general living of single life and get cracking with coupledom. I’m at that age where it just makes sense. I am feeling that male company on a full time basis is absolutely required from here on in.
I live in hope that I will find my knight in shining armour by the end of this season. Now let me be clear here, I am not looking for some sort of tit in a tin can. No. I have had my fair share of those, in fact I have had everybody’s fair share. So to be mighty specific, I am literally looking for the real deal.
Even though it comes across this way, I am not one of those girls with a time line and a baby goal. Bloody hell no. I have simply arrived at the point in my life where I know that I’m ready to meet the man that I am supposed to be with. And, by the end of the summer, come hell or high water I need to have found him.
Its official, my green light is on.
So, welcome to my world. My sometimes dark depressing world, but welcome none the less.
Let me give you somewhat of an insight about me:
My life is relatively normal. I live alone with the current love of my life Gucci Prince Michael the 2nd (My ridiculously wonderful dog - Guch for short), a car named Kastro and a scooter named Betty.
I have a great team of Mingers (terribly good friends) that I love dearly (most of the time) and a non-blood related Sister of the opposite sex. Sound pretty normal so far? I would say so. However I live in a land filled with mostly abnormal people. Firstly Marmaris is home of the Turkish love rat. I won’t bore you with the stories as I’m sure you’ve heard many, but what Marmaris also attracts is the crazies, the self obsessed and the downright psychotic ex pats in search of a better life and cheaper beer. Sometimes this rubs off on you and you get sucked in to the pointless drama of it all, but if you are clever (and you would be wise to be so), you dust this unwelcome shit off as quickly as possible and steer clear of the unwanteds.
I was born in Manchester and being that my Mum is from South Africa, we have done quite a lot of travelling in our time. This gave me the bug. I won’t go into too much detail about the how’s and why’s that got me living here, but I had just gotten rid of a nob head when I looked around at the grey skies and thought fuck it, I need me some sun. Don’t care where, but I want that flight and I want that beach. And that’s just what I did. Nothing and no one could have stopped me hopping on that plane back then. Now would be a different story entirely….
I like most, have an ex. He was the thorn in my side for a heck of a long time. When I say thorn, I obviously mean the one that got away, the one that broke my heart, the one that I should steer well clear of in all future endeavours, and the one that I always drunk text. As soon as I get close to removing his presence from my life, he for some reason starts to rear his head again. I have had to input him in my mobile as ‘Do not Drunk Dial FFS’, but even that doesn’t work. Why don’t I delete his number? Like most good ex stalkers, I know it by heart drunk or sober. So my way of thinking was to name him something that may put me off dialling. It doesn’t.
I can pull my shit together when I need to as I somehow found myself running my own business. I don’t quite know how that happened, but it did none the less. Well, that’s a bit of a fib, I know exactly how I ended up where I am. My ex boss decided to not pay me for 3 months and rip me off all at the same time. Once this happened I decided to take a few months off to contemplate life. Vodka was the key ingredient in the contemplation process. Once the process was complete, my mind was made up. I had decided to become a show girl in Vegas. If Holly Madison can do it, then I’m sure as shit I can too. In the mean time I decided to go full throttle with the business while I work on removing my stomach.
To survive living in Marmaris I have had to pretty much work like a dog to make ends meet, everyone has to. There have been the best friendships ever formed and a million memories made (some that have been forgotten due to the vodka) and most of those memories were made whilst I worked as a holiday rep.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not always wonderful living here. Sometimes the grass is not always greener. Sometimes it really pisses me off. But I’m still here and I don’t feel like moving anywhere else most of the time.
So, as you can see, I am a normal(ish) kind of gal. I don’t have any weird fetishes that I need to point out, nor do I have any obsessive compulsive disorders.
In all honesty my life is as bog standard as they come. It’s not glamorous, it’s not mundane. But you really couldn’t make it up…
