It is no use someone else pointing out to you the depths of your own immaturity: no, they can cajole but the awareness of the matter must be realised independently.
So it was on Monday night, when I spoke to the woman who gave birth to these words back in 2008.
I mentioned to her that I still had a score to settle with the past; someone who barred the way to my first girlfriend when I was still a teenager.
Yes, leaping from the pages of every work of fiction, but very real to me, is the dramatis personae of the distrusting mother, fearful of the influence which an older male has over her daughter, and inclined to condemn as guilty until proven innocent.
One (alleged) comment caused me to resent this woman for years, and the feeling has only gone away since Monday.
What apparently happened is that her daughter and I were out some place or other, and were seen (doing nothing inappropriate) from a distance by this girl's mother.
The mother commented to a neighbour, so I was told, that this lad looks an idiot, and isn't good enough for her daughter.
I was affronted, and utterly livid. Why, I asked myself for years, did she not bother to speak to me before drawing her erroneous fucking conclusions?
Two things now come to mind. Firstly, if she had troubled herself to talk to me, it is the case that I was the trainee journalist with a fear of telephones, and a still greater fear of making conversation. So her worst fears about my general idiocy would likely have been solidified.
Secondly, appearances can deceive. Bluefish, of course, set our ill-starred ball rolling by questioning whether I might be autistic. I may or may not be (I never found out because the one frozen, horrendous e-mail I sent happened to bounce) but that is how I am perceived.
From this detached perspective, it is difficult to argue with the Medusa who has hissed in my ear for a decade, and so I shall argue no longer. You had a point, even if it ought to have been expressed with more care (assuming it had been said at all. Those for whom confidence is a stranger easily absorb second-hand, unsubstantiated criticism.)
I cast off my immaturity in a piecemeal way. Today, I react with an appalled, half-grief waiting to be fulfilled when I think about having to relinquish someone close to me.Tomorrow, I will shrug, blank-faced and monolithically unmoved.
When the younger girl in question ended our epic seven-week relationship, my response was the former: annihilated by sadness, I swore no female would ever similarly cause such damage again, and averted my eyes until three days ago.
No woman would take all of me for a second time - I shall always hold back in future, because if I'm excoriated in that manner again, I shall certainly die.
Of course, the late onset of maturity as I approach my 32nd birthday now makes the correct path apparent: give freely, without a second thought, to the outermost extremities of one's talents.
Be aware that even this exertion may not be enough, so the possibility of a relationship breaking down is theoretically possible - and yet do not permit this thought to obstruct all others.
The long, articulated tail of others who have been and gone is neither here nor there - they cannot condemn the present, and I extract the happy memories of them to feed today.
Even so, I shall not be free of mistakes, no matter how much positive ballast there is, but I can accept my errors and those of others, for such tests are our yardstick.
The mistakes of the past do not define us, and we ought not to align ourselves with an impossible future that glitters, only for it to certainly recede into a mirage, time after predictable time.
No, all we have is now, uncomplicated by distant, cherished ghosts and free of the guilt-inducing, unobtainable It.
There is nothing but the moment, and thus I am free.
