My acquaintance and I

Some days depression feels like an invisible twin, who visits when you least expect it and when you're worst-equipped to deal with them. When they arrive, you feel that, "Oh no, not now" response. But they're persistent, and persuasive.

One morning after Nicole and I separated, I woke up in bed and let my bedroom come slowly into focus. Lashings of beech veneer said, "Ikea" all over the room, from the shelves to the curtains and finally where my eyes rested, on the bedclothes. I remembered feeling this way one morning in London, Elephant & Castle to be precise. I was 27 or 28 at the time, freshly graduated, embarking on my second career and living and working in one of the busiest capitals of the Western world.

I didn't have much to show for my life other than a long-winded route to university, and a moderately successful retail management career. But, I felt pretty contented. I was doing what I wanted to do (at the time), living where I wanted to live, and happy to concentrate on career progression as my main priority. I'd built some semblance of a life and, essentially, had the rest of that ahead of me. I even had disposable income.

Thus it wasn't a good feeling to wake up in similar surroundings, because I was ten years older. I'd added a successful if not meteoric decade-long PR career, but, I'd also added a failed relationship that had got as far as marriage. I was ten years older, but in terms of progress I'd gone backwards. I had ten years less to figure out whatever it was that I wanted to do in life, and do it.

I felt robbed, as if someone had sneaked in during the night and taken away a decade of my life. Jeez, I didn't even have anything tangible to show for it. Lots of experience but no home, no car, no finance to speak of, and no job. No leads on those things I wanted to achieve. Nothing.

On days like this, life feels like a game of snakes & ladders except there's only snakes left. So it's just a matter of time before your next snake arrives, hits the 'reset' button, and puts you right back where you started. Often it only sets you back days or weeks, but sometimes it's months or years. And that's how I felt, like I was at the foot of a giant snake that'd confiscated 3,650 days from me. Now I had to do it all again.

This is what my acquaintance reminds me of when they're here. That I'm ten years older, mortal, dying, and most of all running out of time. They suggest I may have already blown it, that it's probably all downhill from here, that somewhere in the past is the woman of my dreams and the life I've always wanted but I wasn't paying attention or didn't make my move. That I'll probably never father children...

..that all of us, but especially I, will die alone.