When You Disappeared

by John Marrs

There was only one direction for me to go. Their world was still in sleep but I had woken up. And by the time they roused, there would be one less tortured soul amongst them hanging on by his fingertips.

It was simply too late; we were irreparable. Stones had been cast and glasshouses lay in shards all around us. Inside I was dead; it was time for my exterior to follow suit.

I would start afresh as the man I wanted to be, and not the man she had made me.

if you scratch the surface of something perfect, you’ll always find something rotten hidden beneath.

Because the more you trust in someone, the more opportunities you give them to shatter your illusions about them.

It was better to remain on my island than drown in somebody else’s sea.

You can either learn from your parents’ mistakes, or repeat them and use them as an excuse for your own behaviour.

But I knew eventually it would fail me. Everything that makes you happy eventually disappoints. And it was pointless creating a new life for myself if I wasn’t going to live it.

As much as she hated being controlled by a puppetmaster, she got the feeling she’d have to play along a lot longer before she could cut the strings herself.

But the greatest moments of your life are exactly that – just moments. And by their design, moments don’t last.

At an age where I should have been thinking about taking my foot off the accelerator, I was desperately trying to stay in the car.