Life-How Not To Live It

    I was 27, a single parent and had just exited from another doomed to failure relationship, yet I was not depressed, I was not blaming myself for the failure of the relationship, I was not on a very bad low – what was happening to me?

   Well it took me a few hours to work out exactly what was going on, a few hours to explain and find the rationale behind my mellow self, because this reaction wasn’t real, it couldn’t possible be happening and it was impossible for me to believe that I could possibly have a rationale explanation for this feeling. 

   Yet I could and I did, I had made a massive discovery about myself, I had learnt that I was a person, I had feelings and emotions, I was a human being who was entitled to be treated with respect.  The realisation that the failure of this relationship and the other relationships that I had been in was not entirely down to me was the best thing that could actually happen to me, as something had changed within me, I was no longer willing to be the doormat.  For the first time, in a very long time, I felt alive and human, I felt that I was entitled to join everyone else and consider myself an important and a necessary part of life, I existed and I could survive in my own right.

   Now this revelation may not seem much on its own but it was the beginning of a new era for me and in effect, a new start to my life, one in which I would enjoy and take control over in all-important aspects, for me life just got interesting.

   As I started to begin my new life, I glanced back at past relationship, not in nostalgia, or in bitterness but more in necessity.  I had to discover at which point in the past did I wake up from my dream, lose the fuzziness, realise I wasn’t living any kind of life that I could enjoy.  I had to find the point in my life where I really existed as a person, in order to re-discover myself and once I had hold of it, it was vital that I not let it go because that point in my life would steer me through my future, that point in my life, would become my anchor throughout the rest of my life.  The point at which I would forever refer to if or when I felt myself start to fall down that slippery path, that point in my life that I would need to have as an anchor, to buoy me down and stop me from making the same mistakes again.

  Therefore, as you can see, nostalgia had nothing to do with this glance back on my life but had every thing to do with my future and ensuring I reached the goals I had set for myself.  That’s funny, that word ‘goals’, the word can bring up all sorts of connotations and emotions, but for me it’s merely the measure of my success, its my light at the end of the tunnel and it helps to keep me focused and sane.  Yet looking back I can’t recall the last time that my ‘goals’ were of any use to me and I suppose it’s why I ended up in the state I did.

   I remember that I was eleven years old and I had just read my first Stephen King book and I cannot remember which particular book it was, but what I can recall is the burning desire and need to be just like him.  It was at that moment that I discovered my one true dream and ‘goal’, no matter what it took or how long I was going to be a writer.