Waiting For Too Long

"The good ones go, if you wait too long."

I'm 17.

"Waiting too long, Joshy what you saying?"

I'm 17.

These kind of late teen years I think are all about experimenting. You're still trying to figure out the person you're going to be, what your hobbies are, what clothes you like, the music you listen to. Everything you thought you knew about yourself invariable changes around this age. It's all changed for me. When people come up to me and say "Joshy, you've changed" I always say that I know. Time forces us to change. You can't get to 90 years old and be the same person you were at 19. A 71 year gap can change everything. A 71 day gap can do that. This is the time to make mistakes, when you're older it's harder to correct something that could just be a sniff of white or an encounter with a girl at a girl right now, but when you have a job and a wife and kids, that mistake is life shattering, not the experience it is right now. It's about experimentation. Experiment with girls, with alcohol, with behaviour, with hair, with fashion, with money. 

But I see couples, happy couples still. It's reaching their six year anniversary. They met in year 7 and are still together today, in year 13. And this frazzles my brain. For someone that's never been commitment focused I can never comprehend quite how 2 people can still be so interested in each other when at this age, commitment isn't the focus. But I'm changing. 

I sat on Facebook one night and a relationship status popped up. I looked and my face fell.

And then another status.

And another.

And another.

And then one more. And I couldn't hold my head up any more.

Each smiling, happy girl had once been in my arms. Had once been happy with me. Had wanted me.

Each one beautiful, so lovely, but gone.

I was happy for them of course, it wasn't my feelings for them that changed my mood. It was that very line "The good ones go."

And then did I smile. I'd finally realised quite what that meant.

I knew what the words meant, but I'd never felt the emotion that Drake felt as those words passed his lips. For that one brief moment, I shared a feeling with a man I will never meet.

"The good ones go" And they quite clearly do. I cannot expect to marry every single girl I will ever kiss, ever text until the early hours, never wanting to be the first to say goodbye, because it could so easily be good bye.

But my lust for experimentation of "Finding myself" has left me alone. Has left me behind as the girls I have wanted have all found lives better off.

Of course not all these relationships are forever, but they never waited for me, as I never expected them to.

But it's time for the experimentation to end.

I know who I am. I know what I like, who I like. I know the person I want to be.

I feel alone, surrounded by a million people but I have wonderful conversations with myself. 

I am not truly alone of course. There are always those that you can turn to as friends, without realising you had them in the first place. And then things change.

I've waited too long.

I'm 17