This piece is yet another that sat in the fragments pile for quite some time, as it always felt incomplete.
Eventually, I came around to the opinion that, perhaps I was approaching it from the wrong angle, and that it actually already said all that it needed to say...

Oft-times, life tends to be an exercise in trying to extricate ourselves from all the bad choices we make (especially in those years of our lives, where we don't know any better, because we think we know everything.
Of course, bad choices have this way of hanging around like a foul smell that resists any and all efforts to remove, mask, or dissipate it.

All-too-often, especially over the long term, extrication turns out to be a fool's game, and merely surviving is the best result we have any right to hope for...

Yes, this explanation is rather broad and vague, but I think it works best that way.

Of course, YOMV and YMMV and all of that.

Sooner or later, even if we should know better, all of us inevitably answer some sort of siren call...