In 2011 I lent Michelle Altschuler £1000.
This was a loan to get her a flight from Mexico to Italy.
We had been dating for about 18 months having met in Rome before moving to Greece and then living for 7 months at her parents's house in Tampico.
Tampico was very violent, at that time controlled by feuding drug cartels and a colleague of mine was held at gunpoint with his famly by cartel sicarios in a restaurant. On two occasions Michelle sent me texts saying "don't take the bus home, we'll come and get you, there's been a gunfight down the road". Three months before I arrived in the city, someone had thrown a severed head through the doorway of the television studio next to my place of work. We never went out to bars, restaurants or discotheques due to the high possibility of them being attacked by gunmen. I was specifically told by Michelle not to go jogging because I would be kidnapped (they call this Sequesto Espresso apparently) and her family would have to pay a ransom to get me back.
In a perpetual state of anxiety, I returned to the UK in August 2011, later borrowing the £1000 from a friend to buy Michelle the plane ticket she needed to get out of Mexico. Throughout this time we were still officially "together" and exchanged "I love yous" regularly via video and phone calls.
The plane landed in Italy in January 2012 and two days later, Michelle broke up with me via a Skype call. The one line I remember most of all from this chat was when she said "it's better if we break up now so you can find someone else while you're still good looking".
This in itself was bad enough (I had asked her twice to marry me and was, at that time, very much in love with her) but to really rub salt in it, she then stated a couple of weeks later that she shouldn't have to pay me the money back because "I feel like merchandise, because you didn't get what you ordered you want your money back".
Like many a lovestruck fool, I decided not to make a fuss, blaming myself for the breakup and even saying that I was "not the boyfriend that you deserved but please understand that I always wanted to be".
That was the last I ever heard from her.
Now...
11-ish years later and that debt is still owing. It was only ever a loan (which Michelle knew) and despite the rampant gaslighting that she attempted in order to justify both breaking up with me and not paying me back it is time to pay the piper senorita.
During our time in Tampico she refused to find a job stating that it "isn't fair if you expect me to get any job like a cleaner or a receptionist because then I won't be able to get the job I really want as an artist". So...she basically sat on her bottom the entire time and didn't contribute in any way to finances for the house. I on the other hand was working as a teacher and required to hand over rent to her parents and also buy food. The £1000 I later borrowed in the UK to buy her a plane ticket was when I was on unemployment benefit and it took me 16 months to pay it all back. The last payment was meant to come out on April 1st but was taken the day after due to a bank holiday. The irony of this date has not escaped me!
Michelle refused to acknowledge that I alone had made it possible for her to leave Mexico, stating that she would have found the money some other way even if I hadn't lent it to her.
Tampico was so dangerous at that time in history that it was even referenced in an episode of Breaking Bad (not a joke!)
So, Michelle you have my IBAN and while £1000 in today's money would now be worth £1,356.25 I'm not greedy so let's call it quits at the original figure.
If anyone would like to read the melodramatic version of this story then check out this blog, written while I was still grieving. Feel free to also check out this rather mawkish video I made in 2011 to celebrate being with what I thought would be the mother of my children one day.
