The way you've been treated?

I'd love you to believe that I'd been quietly considering what to say. How to sum up what has transpired in one elegant blogpost. Giving credit where credit is due. Admitting my own faults. Striving to seek a balance and atone for all that keeps me awake at night. Fuck that. I've had no internet.

Careful consideration and the unconditional support of my peers has convinced me I was completely in the right. No question of it. They should make me a saint or name a cathedral after me or something. Maybe a statue in the city centre.

So what have I learned from this fiasco?

1. Trying to build a relationship with a man who has "Everything Fades" tattooed on his arm is maybe not the most realistic thing to do.

2. While the allure of women and whispered nothings is undeniable, Nerf and beer is fucking awesome.

3. While I previously tried to reconcile the wisdom of sitcoms with the idea of reasonable female actions I can now conclude that women are batshit crazy given the right trigger. In this case the right trigger was me.

4. While saying "chillax" to some people will rile them up, saying "after the way I've been treated the past couple of weeks?" is my flash-phrase. I think it unlikely the average junkie accidentally happening on that one.

5. In bygone days ending a relationship via text message seemed rude or uncaring. I disagree. The depth of emotion could be seen by the indiscriminate use of umlauts.

6. Better now than after what would have been a picnic seething with repressed emotions.

7. That cats have more in common with snakes than they do with dogs.

This may seem like very little to have taken from the relationship. Biographers may someday debate the importance of this, but to date my life has yielded one original life lesson. That is, if you have a blocked nose and no tissue paper do not blow your nose while in a public restroom, you have no idea what might be there.

Everything Fades

I think smoking looks cool, just for an instant. Especially if you can deliver a killer line while smoking and maybe even blow a smoke circle. Fucking awesome. Anyone who disagrees with me is obviously a filthy fucking liar, but that's just in the instant. Living for the moment, the reality stretched out past the cool line and the smoke circle is kids with asthma from second hand smoke, a respirator for you and a death not worthy of the hero you were trying to be with the, in hindsight, shitty smoke circle. Plus you taste like cigarettes and if that was a nice taste they'd probably put it in chocolates or crisps but it's not.

Tattoos are just as fucking stupid and just as awesomely cool. They are essentially a scar you opted for. Not because you were taking a bullet for the president but cos you thought a butterfly and a fairy playing together was cool.

I have a scar on my arm from when I tried to wrestle a knife away from my younger brother, this was only two years ago. I have a scar on my leg from trying to point a stick and pushing real hard against a knot in the wood. It slipped and cut nice and deep into my leg. The scar from when I was a child and pissed off that pack of dogs has all but gone. Like my tattoos, they all mark a place and time in my life. Regardless of motivation, whether it's the saccharine sweet shit on Miami Ink about remembering fallen loved ones or cos eagles rock superhard it'll remind you in ten years time of that one day.

My modest collection of tattoos is, in order:
a dragon on my right shoulder blade;
the word Cliché on my left shoulder (conceived moments after the dragon was finished);
and just the other day - the words Everything Fades on my right inner arm.

None of it has any meaning, just shit I thought was interesting at the time. I sometimes wish I had the gall to say it had deeper meaning, but I'm pretty fucking shallow.

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So on Tuesday I went into the local tattoo shop in the village. Ostensibly I was in the village looking for orange juice and happened to wander in. I got talking to the guy there because as you might imagine in a small town they have little business and are happy to talk to anyone.

I mentioned I had been thinking of getting some text on my arm, namely Everything Fades and we started looking at fonts. The dude really wanted to Latino it up but I politely declined. I settled on one but the "v" looked like a "b" and details like that worry me. So we started trying to doctor the "v", ultimately chopping the tail off of a "y" to make what I think is the perfect "v". I smiled, just a little.

All that agreed. The dude asked did I want to do it now. Since I was already there I figured why not. I got a bit worried when he slammed three cans of red bull but his hands seemed steady enough after this, so why not? 45 minutes later and I was permanently scarred.

People keep asking what it means, I think they want me to say it's a melancholic reflection on my own mortality and in particular my soon to be fading youth. Fuck that.