Exemplars

Awake at 5am – I was immediately very conscious that it is almost exactly 12 years since I got the job at the medical library, over 10 years since the trouble with the threatening yobs began, and 10 years since my dad became so ill that he couldn't really cope from day to day anymore.

I remember thinking once it became obvious that the trouble with the yobs was going to continue, that this would probably take about 10 years to go away, by which time I'd be 50, my life would be past the time of promise and development, and would be more or less over, and my parents would probably be dead. In fact it took 7 years, but in the meantime my parents did die and my health failed.

Given the seven years after 1991, the summer I realised I didn't want to be an illustrator, when I was mostly unemployed, that's the last 18 years of my life, from 32 to 50, wasted – the years of children, of career, of career consolidation. The ten years before were hard themselves, but they didn't feel hopeless.

This is all something I already knew, but for some reason it hit me with great weight this morning, and I became very anxious – how or why I can be anxious about something that is passed, I don't understand. Sad, depressed, yes, but not anxious.

Separately I've realised how normal, how everyday the sexual and romantic part of life is in most people's lives. Because I was on my own so much I didn't notice, but it's utterly normal – it's why there are children playing in the street, young women walking with pushchairs. It seemed something extremely difficult to achieve to me, but almost every damn fool achieves it. It's not necessarily easy and straightforward but it is common and everyday. I think part of the reason that I didn't notice this is because it wasn't happening in front of my eyes, I didn't have a group of friends I saw pairing off, and obviously people don't commonly have sex in public. Even passionate kissing and clinching in public makes other people uncomfortable, the comic response to the sight being "get a room".

So for me at least the evidence of other people's romantic and sexual relationships was implicit not explicit, and I either didn't notice it, or I blanked it out to avoid the pain of acknowledging it.

It's only now, since my mother died and I've connected to some degree with people of my own age again, that I've realised how life works and how late it is.