I imagine most of us have loved. And lost. I also imagine that most of us look back, on occasion, and wonder what the hell we were thinking.

Some years ago I made what I still regard as the worst mistake of my life. When it went to hell it didn’t destroy the whole world, it didn’t leave me any more destitute than I was already, it didn’t put me in rehab, and in truth I recovered quicker than I had any right to. But this was a relationship that I should never have gotten into, and doing so involved me selling out just about every principle that was important to me. I betrayed myself, my values, and thank all the gods that my grandparents, who raised me to be a better man, weren’t alive to see the shame I rained down on us.

I’ll always associate Toad the Wet Sprocket’s “Something’s Always Wrong” with those three lost years. Not just the break-up, but even before that. Something was wrong from the beginning, rotten at its very core, and it’s fitting that the CD was released the year I sold my soul. The song was waiting for me when the bottom finally fell out. How could it not be – it had been stalking me the whole time.