Lights down. Screaming crowd. Mates around me. Breathe in. Breathe out. On stage. Lights up.
Boom.
This is my life. I go up onto that stage, sing my soul out for the thousands of people that come to hear our words, and remind myself how blessed I am to be alive. There aren't many people that can look at themselves in the mirror and know that they are doing what they want to do. What they were born to do.
Life really is a funny thing when you think about it. It can take so many different twists and turns dependant on how it is you live it. You make a bad decision, and it probably will come and bite you in the ass. Everyone will hate you, or if they don't hate you, they'll never forget. Your actions hanging in the air every time you meet, and whisper in the words that you say even though you didn't mean to say it.
If you're a lucky son-of-a-bitch, then you get away with it. No one will know that you've made this shitty decision apart from you, and you go on walking on the planet the way you always have. Or it could wrack you with guilt and you'll go and destroy yourself. Nothing will be worth living any more and you'll just find any way to make it better, or persecute yourself for what you did.
But if you're like me, you try and do the good things. Make the good decisions in life. Know that every single thing you've done is for the good of not only yourself, but everyone else around you. Sure, you fuck up sometimes. Make the wrong decisions by accident. End up hurting someone along the way. But you can at least look back on the reasons you did it and know that it was all done with good intentions.
I'm not a saint. Far from it. I most certainly have made my fair share of mistakes in the past. I have a trunk full of regrets buried away in my heart. I have my flaws, my bad habits, my really fucking annoying traits that even I look back at and think 'what the fuck was I doing?' But that's what makes me exactly who I am. The one that my friends and family know and love. The one that won me the heart of, quite honestly, the most flawless woman I've ever met.
Alright, alright, calm down. You heard me right. There is a woman in my life. No one knows about her, though. Well, that's a lie. The boys do. And my family. And all my close friends. But as for the public, they don't even know she exists. And that's how we like it.
She runs her own little shop in London. Down one of those quirky alleyways that you're always pleasantly surprised to find on a rainy day. Full of candles, and pillows, and flowery smelling stuff that women seem to love so much. Sudsy. That's what she called it. Kind of flimsy and bubbly. But that's her all over. And that's her shop all over too. So if she wants to call it Sudsy, then so be it.
I'm not going to lie when I say I like her job more than I care to admit. Most men are quite shallow and want a supermodel girlfriend, or a dancer, or something like that. And I'm not going to lie that when I was a younger man, I had the same dreams. But this girl...this girl is different. She's a shop owner. A shop full of soap and scented candles. Not surprising that she comes home smelling of a mixture of those aromas. And would you really blame me if I said I pull her close the second she steps through the door just to breathe them in?
Grab your bucket, folks. I'm a sap. A hopeless, romantic, fool of a man that has fallen quite hard in love with a woman. Someone that is separated from the life that I've found myself caught up in. Full of flashing lights, interviews, screaming fan girls and months of lonely travelling. But who loves me for me. Not those things that the other girls do. She loves me. Just me.
And I love her just as much. If not more.
“Dan?”
Her voice rings through the air of our little home. I'd like to say we have some country cottage, or maybe you're expecting some grand mansion. But no. It's just a little apartment in the heart of London. Nothing special when you look at it from the outside. But to us, it's perfect. She's adorned the most of it with the stuff she sells at work, painted the walls warm colours, and I've even allowed some of her fluffies on the settee. Fluffies being stuffed bears. But that's her word for them. Fluffies...
