So long ago. Yet it feels like yesterday. A song enough to stir up memories half-buried in the mind's desert. Images of repressed terror, substance-fuelled obsessions and emotional abandonment.

Reminiscing of a time, years ago, when the only thing that could get me out of bed every morning was the thought of that same evening, the moment I could lose myself again in a spell of unnaturally deep sleep. Oblivion. Getting high just to stay alive. Staying alive just to get high. Content simply to watch the days go by, bringing me another step closer to the person I thought would make everything right. How naive to expect someone else could carry my burdens. How innocent to invest in his assumed magical powers.

We grow old. We learn. We never do. We refrain from making the same mistakes. We try out new ones, instead. I'm stronger now, not so easily affected. My sadness has been freed of its destructive tendencies; my fear has lost its flavour of paranoia. It's allright if I wasted my adolescence feeling like a wise grown up and acting like an ignorant kid. Memories are ours as we are theirs. No desire to change the past resides within me.