i'll keep you here

i was walking home, trying my best not to breathe in this killer haze, then this song came up and it was straight back to the hazy nights of 2006 when i was working in the cinema and i would walk through the city every night and the lights would glow softly behind the dreary shroud.

that was such a different world and a different life, another version of me that's long disappeared into the murky depths of time.

what draws me back then? there was a girl. i don't think this has ever been openly acknowledged before and maybe it's already painfully obvious to all but there is always a girl involved whenever i start reminiscing. it was always hidden, or i was always hiding.

of course there are always random girls that i say i've fallen for, but those are merely girls and this was a girl. there has only been three of them in my life and she was the first - being the first, it was perhaps expectedly brief, but the effects were unexpectedly and irrepressibly long-lasting.

i have long wondered why some of these things still stick with me. i may not exactly feel it anymore but they are still there nonetheless, taking up room when space is scarce. is this normal? sometimes i think it's because i've kept it all to the point where they've each grown a life of their own, a mixture of history and imagination, memories faded and re-painted over.