Chapter Text
You would think that through a screen you wouldn’t experience this moment of tenderness, this moment that lasted milliseconds in real time but replayed so many times you thought that maybe it had been minutes, at least a few.
You’d of course be wrong, this moment drove you even crazier through a screen. Did they feel it too? Did they intend it like that?
You’d find out years later that of course they felt it, but god they did not intend it.
Of course, like most hopeless romantics I read about moments like this, like any other hopeless romantic I prayed and longed for the moment to happen to me. In school, before school even, if I found myself alone with anyone who I deemed compatible enough I did everything I could to orchestrate a moment I became sure was only found in fiction.
I remember once when I was seven I believe, inside a giant bush on a farm property I was alone with someone I have long forgotten the face and name of, but the bush towered over us, we were alone, and it was cozy. I think we were playing a game where we were lone travelers, each looking for something of our own. I remember a moment where we were crouched over a pile of sticks I had decided was a bonfire, and my playmate crouched down over my play fire and started talking to me about his pretend backstory and how he would achieve his mission. I remember thinking that this was the moment in my books, this was the moment where he would reach a hand out and put hair behind my ear, or this was the moment he would go to adjust the fake fire and our hands would brush. I remember flushing in preparation for the moment, but instead he stood back up and started pacing, in that moment giving his character a wife and kids.
Obviously this wasn’t the loss my small heart was sure it was. This kid came to our playgroup twice, I don’t remember anything else about him, but it is funny to think about. Despite the failure of the moment, I was sure I would achieve it shortly. I had thought that the universe brought this boy to my playgroup to be my soulmate, that that’s why he showed up when I was exceptionally lonely, but when he didn’t come back a third time I knew that was the universe telling me no, telling me to wait.
I didn’t want to wait of course, I was full of love to give and full of love for you , but I just didn’t know when I would meet you. I knew I loved you already, knew I would always love you, and since I knew this I was sure that I would surely meet you very early in life.
That’s why I was sure you were the person who made me my little wand when I was nine, the person who hand carved it and wood burned butterflies into the handle. But when they handed it to me to gift it, and our hands brushed, I flushed and she moved back like the moment was nothing. I spent weeks obsessing over that moment, wondering if she was just so cool and that’s why she didn’t react, but of course I came to the conclusion that it was just that she wasn’t you. I didn’t want her to be you, anyway. Her big brother was annoying, and god she was so, so insufferable, even at nine. She was a good friend, but every daydream I had of us having a future together she became the most obnoxious wife anyone could have, she was already such a nag, and imagine marrying a nag, yuck, I couldn’t. She was also very bad at playing minecraft, and when we talked about Harry Potter she never got it , she never understood what I said about any of it.
There were a lot of people I hoped were you, as every aspect of my life got worse I began to genuinely pray that I would meet you soon. I knew you were someone I needed, someone I couldn’t live without.
Before I moved to California I had these cherubs hung on my wall, I didn’t have them for any religious reasons of course, I found them at an estate sale when I was about six and had to have them. They were in chestnut frames, dark forest green velvet and they were pearly porcelain, like a shadow box. I don’t think they survived the move across country. I also had a tiny lace angel ornament, again, none religiously, but I found her at a christmas tree farm when I was seven and I had to have her. I carried her with me everywhere, I think I destroyed her after my highschool girlfriend wasn’t you.
But this isn’t about when they disappeared, this is a far more pathetic story than decor getting donated by accident or a teenager acting out after a heartbreak.
You know I was always very vocally an atheist, always telling anyone who got stuck listening to me talk that I was jewish and didn’t believe in a god, but believed in the universe. So tell me why I put so much weight into poor little angels? Tell me why so many nights I spent sleepless, or falling asleep while praying to these poor angels that you would show up soon. Telling them I would do anything to meet you sooner than later, willing to do absolutely anything to ensure your arrival into my life.
Of course, even if those angels could have somehow had an impact on us meeting, they wouldn’t have done it for me . I again, was not someone who had faith, if those little things had any powers they would not waste it on me. I think I knew that, but that didn’t stop me from trying. I wanted you in my life like nothing else, I felt like I would make any necessary sacrifice for it even at ten years old.
I didn’t know who you were of course, and I don’t think the angels could’ve brought you to me, as I said, but I know I dreamt of you back then. I know that the nights I fell asleep praying I dreamt of the tender moments only found in books, I know that when I was asleep it was such an endless comfort to be with you in my dreams, and I know when I woke up without you, without any prospect of you, I felt a deeper sadness than I knew what to do with. Like I said, it's a far more pathetic story than the others.
I had a diary back then, I wrote about you, about the adventures we would go on in my dreams, I don't really know when I stopped keeping the diary, I think it was around when I started high school, I lost a lot of myself and my focus on you during that time. But when I did keep that diary it was like a treasure trove of itself. Stories about me, an insert character whose name changed often because none ever fit me , and a John, he was always John. Sometimes the stories were fantastical, journeys, adventures, some sort of a quest.
My favorites were when John and I grew up together, across the street, or even the same apartment building, we grew up with each other, and we had other lovers, and we had other lives, but some hardship would occur and everyone else would leave me, or leave John, and that brought me and John together. Once together, John and I would resume a close friendship we had lost over the years of busy lives, but it resumed in record time, every time, and by a month into talking again we started to share those tender moments. Once the story was dramatic, John had been in a car crash with his remaining family and ended up being the lone survivor. Once out of the hospital I would visit him often, bring him home cooked meals, and help him tend to bandages and wounds. It would all be innocent at first, of course it would be, he was my friend and I wanted to help him. But one day, when his stitches had been taken out and I was helping to clean the wound (obviously it was on his leg, an awkward angle, it was best I handled it) he handed me the wash cloth and our hands didn’t even brush, and yet I was filled with this deep sort of longing, sort of want, the kind you only find in romance novels. This feeling that yes I was the one taking care of him but he would still take care of me if I asked, if I needed, it wasn’t platonic, it wasn’t romantic, but still it wasn’t familial. It was something deeper, something far more important, because of course in these stories I had had romantic relationships and so had John, but this went far beyond that, this was something so much more fulfilling and the fact that I had noticed its absence made me feel such a deep emptiness. How could no romance book discuss this topic? How had nothing mentioned this deep canyon that had always been there but somehow I was fine with it just until the moment that in this story John and I didn’t touch hands.
Of course, it was you, you were John, and these were all from dreams I had that I then used to meditate on for hours. Walk around my entire town, or bike, with my little diary and a hot pink ballpoint pen in my bag I lugged around everywhere, always ready to write the next part of John and I’s story. I would obsess over one detail all day , go over what he said in my dream ,how he was dressed, every little thing until I soon had figured out the whole scene and then I’d pull to the side of the trail or wherever I was and sit down and write it all out, then I would continue my walk or bike ride, I’d spend whole weekends doing this, I wanted to do nothing but spend my days writing and thinking about these stories.
I wonder how much of these I made up and how much were past lives we had?
Anyway, the point is, I had this little lace angel, and when I went to bed in that garage every night, I would hold it and tell it the stories I had about John, I would pray to that little angel to please give me something like that, to let me find my John, to let me find you.
That angel never did pull its weight.
A lot of songs became things I played on repeat because I was sure in another life I wrote them about us, about you. This of course included romantic songs, like Stay, Stay, Stay, Young Folks, Funny Little Frog, and lots and lots else. Then there was much less easy to explain away highlights such as Take The Skinheads Bowling, Red Letter Day, Guns for Hands, I wish I could tell you why. But all those songs (and I need to stress this many more) were about you, to me, they made me so endlessly nauseous just to think about, they’d be the songs I had memorized that I wrote out over and over like some sort of ritual on pieces of paper I would throw into the creek.
About the time I properly gave up on keeping a diary, I started being online a lot more, participating in more and more online communities.
There are two that I want to highlight thoroughly.
The first being Harry Potter, which was an online community I had been in decently, but I didn’t start adding to sites that weren’t specifically chat forums until this point. I want to highlight this because the stories I would write with myself either on paper or my long lost fanfics always were very similar stories to my John stories, and I find that funny looking back on.
And the second was Hamilton, sadly, but everyone’s got their dark past.
Of course, it’s not too dark a past, because it was through Hamilton communities on instagram that I met you. When we first started talking, that very first conversation I felt like the tender moment that lasted seconds had finally happened to me. You replied to my story, or you liked my message, and I knew that it was slowly filling the gaping hole in my soul.
You facetimed me, and I felt like how people should only feel in romcoms.
Since the last time I had written in my little diaries I had begun to lose hope of finding you. I was so obsessed with us meeting when we were small I never considered I would one day consider sixteen to be small, but god, honey, we were so small. Too small to really recognize what had happened to us, the connection that we had found. I was ready to tell you everything about myself, I was ready to walk to where you were. I became very guarded and you, oh you I called my best friend in a week. I had had friends for years that no one in my family had heard about but you? They knew you by name within days. Of course, you got overwhelmed by all of it, by how ready I was to call you mine, in some sort of way, and I am sure how you felt with the hole filled in you.
When you came back, every moment felt like a moment that needed to be bottled up and kept and studied, every moment felt like something precious that I had to treasure, if I spoke about it then it’d ruin it. We felt so fragile then, when we were babies and just friends, and there is no one in the universe I would want to grow into more than you. You are every single bit of everything I want around me, in my life. I wish we were tree roots that could grow and tangle into each other and centuries down the line we are towering and strong and people wonder if there was ever really a time where we were two separate trees, always two trees, but they believe we were planted intertwined. I believe that too, for the record.