Our Island
I'll write this here where you won't read it so as not to be tempted to write to you. I will tell this story into the void because I'm a coward, but also because it is better this way. Ghosts of the past may not be welcomeâor worse, they may be destructive, like a sudden storm on a calm day. (And to the people who happen to read it: I hope it gives you some food for thought, or just entertains you a bit.)
It was an endless winter 20 years ago, followed by an endless spring that got imprinted in my memory almost day by day. You wrote to me first as you came across my profile amidst dozens or hundreds of others on that long-since-dead now website where people gathered to talk about magic. And the magic beganâright away. It swept off my previous life, everything that seemed important, and put me on the turbulent journey of our strange relationship.
We wrote to each other every day, pages and pages of thoughts, trying to express, to put into words our very souls for the other to see, to understand. Never before had I met that kind of resonance, and never after. Thousands of miles apart, we wouldn't sleep at night, we would think about each other constantly, and we would write. About everything. Our life views, our dreams, our fantasy worlds, our childhood stories and current hardships. We were learning each other and we were learning ourselves. Still to this day, I remember the sweet tremble inside my chest, and the sensation of a free fall in my stomach every time I would open my inbox and see your letter. It is only virtual, my sanity tried to warn me, it's not all that real. How wasn't that real? The way your words made me feel alive, and the way your occasional silence hurt me. The way I almost couldn't breathe the first time I heard your voiceâthe connection of those old mobile phones was awful, even more so because I was on a beach; sea always calmed me but not that time. I wanted to reach for you in realityâbut oh did I fear that! I was afraid we would not be the same people we imagined ourselves to be; I was afraid I would forget all the words I could string together so easily in writing; I was afraid that everyday life would destroy the magic of our connection. And still, I was waiting to meet you, I wanted to be close to you, I could not stop thinking about you. Even during the exams which I partly failed that summer (or did I? I don't even remember.) Crazy times. Instead of studying and cramming, instead of working on those 3d projects, I was writing to you, or I was thinking about you, or I was just daydreaming while waiting for your letter.
What would have happened if we have managed to meet that summer, after all? Who can tell. Maybe nothing good. Maybe the clarity would have ended our connection right then...or maybe it would have morphed it into something fully real. But we didn't meet. I don't remember exactly why, there were circumstances that were against us. Instead, I met that guy I'd had a crush on in high school. And everything changed.
It was but a brief meeting and almost instant parting, but it threw me into a labyrinth of hell. Oh, the rest of that summer and the autumn were scary. I was drowning in what I thought to be love for that guy, an unrequited one, but looking back, it was mostly just the pain of my hurt ego, and the shock of the first attempt of intimacy. I didn't even know him that well as a person. I still answered something to you, and I felt bad for being dishonest to you, the letters (or was it mostly texting by that time?) became excruciating to write and to receive, because I couldn't open up to you like I used to. And it didn't work that way between us. But I still needed you. Your mere presence, albeit virtual, gave me something I couldn't put into words. But you sensed, of course, the change. You tried to ask me what happened, and I couldn't tell you. At some point, the thoughts of killing myself overtook me, but I was saved by God. You know that story, since in a few months, I found the courage to tell you everything. Having prepared myself to lose you for good.
But you stayed. You still tried to understand the new me. It was only the beginning of the mess.
I wrote this line in one of my stories: "Regrets are only justified when you have chosen wrong. But if you were too weak to even make a choice, isn't regret just a self-indulgent delusion?" What choice could I really make at that time? I thought I had finally found myself, found God, found my path, but oh was I a self-centered moron! Next spring, I finally told you that I had been in love with you. Because, funny thing, we had been playing into friendship the whole time. I guess nobody truly believed in that, yet we were both afraid to give name to this thing between us. So, I finally did, and you answered, you laid your heart bare before me, and all the unsaid was finally put into words. The elation of that! I remember it, I remember the feeling of finally connecting to someoneânot someone, Youâon the deepest level; finally being allowed into your innermost thoughts; the elation of my feelings being reciprocated. That very day, I rejected a guy in RL who was asking me out, telling him that I've got someone I love. Right then and there, being voiced out, everything became undeniably real, no longer virtual. Then, we confessed that we still love each other. I was happy. You were happy. You said you had never felt that happy. And then it was over.
Why? Why, why, why? Why did I feel that emptiness right after the elation? Did I sense that I have nothing to give you for real? Why could I not feel the true connection to the person you had become over those few months of radio silence? You were the same you, maybe with a bunch of new interests, some inner growth, and experience. Why only now, rereading your letters of that time, I can finally read them for real, can see you in these letters? I was only seeing myself back then. I was so overwhelmed with my own shift of ideals that there was no room in my heart for anyone else. We still didn't manage to meet that summer either. It's actually good we didn't. I would've only hurt you, the way I was back then. I did hurt you anywayâwith my words, dismissing your own changes and discoveries, criticizing some of your decisions from the position of a know-it-all righteousness. I spoke about God, about Love, but in fact, I didn't know Love. I could not love you. I was unable to give, I only wanted something for myself, I didn't even know what.
So, I continued to seek it. First, around me, thenâonce I ended up on the ruins of my current lifeâsomewhere on the distant horizon. You still happened to visit me from time to time, to check up on me. I knew you were hurting. And you were still dear to me. I was still salty that you had gone on that mountain trip instead of visiting me even though I knew why; it was my fault, my coldness that stopped you. You were trying to keep your distance now, to heal, perhaps. I missed you so damn much. But my eyes were now fixed on the storms ahead of me, where I thought I saw that something. Remember you told me once: "it seems to me that you will find what you are looking for, perhaps even more:) And there will be pain, and there will be joy, and there will be many things:) Like the ship that is accustomed to stormy winds, and there is little that can surprise the captain⊠In a storm, many take their sails down. But you seem to expose yourself to the blows of the wind and pick up speed instead:)"
Like many of your words, this metaphor hit the nail on the head. Quitting the uni, going against my family, leaving for another city to start a completely new life... I was carried by the winds and waves, and I believed that in this fury of elements, I was about to find something real, something that is mine. At that time, I thought it was something I had to look for somewhere out there, beyond the murky darkness of the storm. Now, my mind cleared of the fog, rereading our old letters, I can piece together the fragments of my own self scattered across the pages of my life, and resurrect the forgotten memories. I remember the beginning almost day by day. But I don't remember the middle very well, and the furtherâor closer to the end, closer to the present dayâthe less I can remember. I feel like I'm reading some lines, entire letters even, for the first time. Who read them instead of me back then? And who wrote the answers? Where was Me? How many signals have gone into the black space, how many bridges have melted into the void⊠How many mazes have managed to draw me into their depths, luring me with false goals and desires, and the oddest thing is that I have always, always remembered you, and put you outside the brackets of that whole life of adventure. How could I not realize it back then?
That this was the reality. Not vice versa.
Was it your offer to meet from time to time on this Island lost in the oceans, untouched by the storms, outside of time and spaceâor was it mine? Probably yours, but I liked the idea, I shaped this Island in my mind. Here, you asked me what he must be like, the man who could stay by my side. He must be very swift and nimble in order to keep up with meâyou jokedâsince I would take off for far away suddenly. "Today, your ship is moored in a tropical port, and you are lying on the sand and looking at the stars. And in the morningâŠyou take your sword and sail away to the horizon, for example, somewhere to the north. And, probably, there are only two options hereâeither to stare at the sea, dumbfounded, or to set off after youâŠand be very fast at that, too, in order to catch up:)" Answering you, I was trying to outline that person in my imagination. Funny. You were talking about travelling through the storms together, but the Island always remained where it had been. I don't need someone who would keep up with me on my journey. I need Youâdid I tell you that? No; at least, never clearly enough. I didn't understand that consciously myself, although wasn't it obvious from the way I kept visiting our Island during various storms? What was I visiting it for? To have a deep conversation with a virtual friend? I thought so, sometimes. It was always the trap we kept falling intoâthe idea of that bond being something less (or something else) because of the physical distance. You told me that the uncertainty, the inability to comprehend what it truly was had been tormenting you. You wanted to say farewell to me so many times, you almost did once, almost. But you didn't. You gave me this Island instead.
That one time, you were very direct in your question. You asked if the ghosts of the past may still have a chance. I failed to give you a clear answer, and I'm sure you took that as a "no". It wasn't. It was just the same old fear, the same old doubt. I'd been treasuring our bond so much that I'd become unable to act, to put it at risk of being tested by real life. It was safer to think about you as my soulmate, someone out there whom I can remain connected with on the deepest level without the necessity to squeeze this relationship into some sort of dating or other things that scared me. What if we, indeed, were totally different people in RL? What if our RL goals would not match?
Now I understand there's no such thing as "virtual" between real people. Reality itself is a lace of interconnected threads, interaction of persons; everything else is but a background noise. Success, achievements, goals, interests...it all seemed more important back then. But every achievement will become a turned page, a dusty trophy on a shelf, and every interest will lose its motivating energy. What remains is threads dangling above the void, never really having been cut, the threads we pretend not to notice. But you're the only memory I don't want to run away from, the warmth of which I want to stay enveloped in. I would crave for my dose of this warmth, of You, through the years. You would give me a bit, and I would go on. We would meet on that Island, rarely, briefly. Until we finallyâquietlyâfell apart completely.
You have found your different shore.
I pretended not to notice it for a half year, and I pretended being surprised to find out. I offered you a nonchalant, joyful congratulation, that of an old brief acquaintance, not even a friend. I still can't believe you didn't see through my lie. Or maybe you did but realized it was better that way. (In truth, in a way, I knew it before you even posted about it on your page. Remember I told you about my dreams that showed me real events happening at the same time? Just like this, I saw it in a dream the night before. Only in that dream, I was in her place. You can imagine my shock the next day, and the catharsis or realizing many things at once. So, I needed that half year of silence before I could even attempt those few brief words.)
No one has been on the Island for a long time. The wind is hissing over the sand, the surf is monotone and unchanging, and the horizon is a flat, clear line. Hopelessly empty. The forgotten promise to meet here from time to timeâat some point it even seemed enough. How could it seem enough? Now I can't figure it out.
"âŠsometimes I just want to get into the future and see what's beyond the "fog of war":) Where will I be, where will you be in a couple of decades:) But where we will be is not the main question; I'm interested in something elseâwhat we will become."
Have that couple decades just passed?
It took me a very long time, and a lot of cruel mistakes, to finally come to understand what love is and what it isn't. So, have I found something in those stormy seas, after all? Have it all amounted to something, in the end? But the Island is deserted, and so it will remain. The world has changed. People have changed. The Island is still there.
