I feel like I’ve fallen into a trap that has snared many before. In the waning of those carefree, hedonistic days of post teen youth, I experienced a kind of golden interlude. A time when all that pitiful, groanworthy teen angst has ebbed away. A time when you finally feel comfortable in the role you’re in, the skin you’re in. La vie en rose.

I didn’t move on. The days kept trickling past and, as all the faces, places and drinks and……other things…… passed and moved on, I remained stagnant. Even though this little snapshot of a life well lived had long since passed me by, I remained determined that, given the right set of circumstances,  happy days would, indeed, be here again.

And it stopped me dead. The ghost of a person who I once believed was the perfect rendition of me kept me back, always calling me back. And I listened. So its dead end job to dead end job, shirking responsibility and fantasising of a way my world could have been.
All this is just standard, teeny punk pop stuff. And it’s a little grating in a man of 26 who just refuses to make something of his life. How long can people hang back with him before they have to move on up the line with everyone else? I had friends who were too good for me, friends I owe more than somebody rightfully should.

This isn’t something you can just tell to go away. “Get over it,” “that was years ago!” almost become catchphrases of my friends. And you feel ridiculous, and pathetic, and like there’s something wrong with you when you can’t just get over it. Again, far superior minds than mine have studied these scenarios. They’ll have the answers you want.

And finally, it happens. For me, it was the back of a monumentally bad decision, along with a move away from my home of several years. The upheaval wasn’t what brought closure though. It was, in short doing something that helps nobody and upsets several. Can’t best a good dick move. That, and my childhood cat died, which felt like the book closing on my childhood. But it allowed to me draw a line under things. I realised that little window into a sun kissed, pastel coloured version of my life had long shut. But now I know, there’s a door to it somewhere further along.

Can’t wait to open it.