Author S. K. Nicholas

I looked up an old lover yesterday. She was the only girl I was interested in for the best part of five years while we studied together at college. She’s married with kids now and by all accounts living an entirely harmonious life. I remember the first time we made love. It was in her parents house on Christmas Day. Friends and family partying downstairs, we fucked in the shower then carried it over to the bed. Afterwards, we laid in each other’s arms until the sun came up early next morning. She means nothing to me now, yet to see her so settled in her life makes me feel uneasy. In my head, I remember us as artists. As young lovers enjoying youth and chaos. We drank the nights away in shit pubs while listening to Pink Floyd on the jukebox. We shared some tough times, and those summers never seemed to end. Only she went and did the sensible thing by settling down with someone. I, on the other hand, have stayed the same. With nothing to my name except for words, my life is dedicated to writing and the impossible possibility of finding love with someone as fucked up as myself. She has a husband and children. A sense of worth; a perfect circle that keeps her safe. I have thoughts and ideas. She has love; I have desperate dreams and a hunger for a perfect storm to sweep me off my feet. To think of all those days, the two of us created now lost. All that intimacy. That sense of something magical, forgotten by her, and pondered by me. There have been others since. Others that have meant more. They too have ended, and they too are estranged. It’s not that I’m afraid of commitment, it’s that I don’t want to lose the only part of myself worth keeping. People are drawn to you for who you are, and then they want you to change; to become someone more for real. I’m poor and foolish, but my only mistake has been wanting to believe there’s more to life than becoming like everyone else. Maybe these words will save me; maybe they won’t. As far as I’m concerned, it’s about the fire you keep inside. You can fall behind. Be defeated time after time. The trick is never giving up on what you believe in, even if it leaves you hanging by a thread. Sometimes it feels like the most absurd way of being, and yet these dreams can’t be traded. Oh, this struggle of mine, this disease that won’t let me quit even when I know I’m beat.