One of life's natural aristocrats, I was essentially useless and in need of beheading.

Looking back at my adventures, the remarkable thing is how distracted and unhappy I'd usually been in the moment, searching only for oblivion.

The still, quiet joy came later, defeated and resigned, at one with an endless blankness within. Life going on without me.

A pointless and defiant waste of time, a stand against ambition and striving, a habit I fell into.

I made myself unmade.

Others had the gall to be younger, some decades so.

Yes, today it all starts again, why not?

I make peace with the past and settle into the present with an eye to my long-term happiness.

It’s not too late. I can turn this around.

The years spent on sex, drugs, alcohol and daydreams, time spent so agreeably.

All my life in front of me, as always.

We try and sell our sprawling, bohemian, and tumbledown home, and attract a couple with almost enough money but not enough sense.

They trust us because we seem the same.

Where others sought adventure, I looked for an escape.

So I went within, where the widest open space was, and quickly lost my mind to find myself.

My parents thought things were going well, because I told them nothing. My hopes, dreams and aspirations were empty beyond oblivion, ignorance and anonymity, and I lacked the words to express this in any form that wouldn't cause alarm, and most of all I was frightened of my father's anger, and how it would play out against my mother.

In this way I spent decades underground and in the shadows, waiting for a death that never came.

I thought I had a bad memory, then realized I'd done nothing to remember.