The Fault in Romanticism

Charlie looked up to the sky and he never looked down ever since. He heard the alluring call of the ocean echoing off the rock edges somewhere. The wind toyed with his sensory as blood retreated from his now cold hanging hands. He was eternally and anticlimactically sinking into the soft white sands beneath, closing up the sky his eyes insisted on believing.

***

I met Charlie when we were both 8 during nap time and he revealed his darkest secret: "my parents are divorced." Charlie whispered through the secured passage made by four of his chubby fingers and my elf ears. I hadn't the slightest idea of what that meant but when Charlie's eyes glossed over, exaggerating his pupil so much I thought he might burst (an image that now I would recount as him being more so afraid of my judgement than of the fact). I had felt very sorry and promised to never tell a single soul on Earth.

I made an unofficial mission then to protect Charlie's fragile confession, purely because I liked the sound of "mission," and stuck by him until the end of elementary. When his father got custody, Charlie moved to somewhere so far away, not even the length from my thumb to my pinky could overcome the distance. I cried when I saw his empty seat in school the next day because I only just understood at that moment that he was more than a piece to my James Bond fantasy.

I ran to his house right after school but there was nothing but stormy sea and a lot of sand in my oxfords. Charlie was already gone in such an abrupt and 9th Symphony sabotaging sweep that I suspected he'd told me so last minute just for a dramatic exit. The sky was swirling gray as if meaning to devour everything, waves violently crashed onto shores to get away from themselves, palm leaves slapped together in a cacophony crescendoing to summon a menacing sea borne monster. One that terrified me but would fail to reach Charlie, in his father's car, coupe away where my storm and our mornings chasing sunrises across the beach were no longer relevant.

We lost contact for 4 years but on March 27th, I received a letter from Charlie. It reads:

I checked the address and tried to measure on the map with my thumb and pinky again, this time the distance was shorter than my hand. My response took two weeks to write because I couldn't decide between my elation and discomfort. There were suddenly so many things to say but so little assurance of their appropriateness weighing down on our obscure status.

Charlie made it easy somehow. His second letter back explained his life since he left our town, his beliefs, his interests, especially his friends and how they would love me. "I wish you were there" and "you should've been there" sprinkled across the 10 page letter were like caramel to my ego; so I thanked him for not forgetting about me in my equally long reply.

We stayed writing to each other even after he told me his enrollment at my high school would be delayed. In his 15th letter to me, I felt the embarrassment and disappointment clinging onto his words:

And then in the 30th, he told me he wasn't coming back at all.

I won't be coming back at all.

When I read his letters, I always imagined him with someone or something waiting for him to finish writing, finish his little excursion to the past, and then come back to the bountiful realities. And thoughts like that made me feel abandoned, as while Charlie had gone on to establish great friendships and marked those around him with his incredible presence, I was only floating between the realm of existence and not, hardly connecting to anyone but also shunned by no one. As if without him I didn't exist, that perhaps it was Charlie's world and we're just all living in it.

But in his 30th letter, I pictured him alone, looking beyond his friends playing basketball in the field and in search of a trace of me.

December 19th I boarded a train to come to him. It was raining heavily so the train got delayed 10 minutes at each stop. The 5 hours train ride bleed through in centuries spent in isolation and uncertainty. I was resorting to the rhythmic sound of the rain and containing my tears when the last 10 minutes waiting in the last stop passed by. In 15 minutes, the train will arrive at its final destination and I so desperately wanted to escape this cycle of continuous setbacks that kept me from touching him and getting close. It frustrated me that Charlie might be worried over my late arrival, that he would be sitting with his head down as insecure as I was, that our first meeting did not go as well as it deserved.

I arrived at the city around 9 PM and found Charlie asleep sitting on a bench, his hands loose on a bouquet of roses and a to go box of my favorite food. He woke when I tapped lightly on his shoulder.

Charlie immediately enveloped me within the layers of his warmth. His scent and strong arms held me with the promise of eternity, then I couldn't do anything else but to bawl. For the first time in my perceivable experience, I was utterly overwhelmed by so much peace and security that I pitied anyone that never had the similar chance to feel before life cuts them off. This man, his soul, this moment, how can I carry them? How do I keep them alive and cherish them?

Like how I wanted to protect Charlie's fragile confession many years ago, I wish so desperately this time to preserve this moment with him, to hide us far far away from the ruthless hands of the world.

I was seized by both happiness and insufferable sorrow. Because even though Charlie could make times stop for me, I knew that we would be too afraid of ruining each other to allow infinite days together. Charlie, who placed his finger underneath my chin and we collide in the purest expression of love, who could give me the answers to all great questions of life, had offered me a spectacle into his beautiful soul; but unlike his darkest secret from elementary, this one was too valuable and fragile for me to dare contaminating.