The Lonely Boy

                Once there was a very lonely boy. He wasn’t lonely on accident—he was lonely by choice.

                It was just easier that way.

                He lived all alone in a small apartment, with neighbors who always kept to themselves. Every morning, he would wake up and make himself look nice. Then he would eat and go to school. Some mornings he also went to work. He was 23 years old and his world was already dark.

                It had happened, not to so long ago that he could easily forget it, but not so recently that anyone wanted to hear about it. And it wasn’t one singular incident that had turned his world to ash, but rather, a lifetime of sadness.

                First it had been his family. Lovely people, to be sure. But he was altogether quite different from them. They all loved him, of course, but he was so utterly different, so completely absurd to them, that it was almost impossible for them to relate. He was a black sheep amongst the snow, and he could never quite fit in.

                Naturally, his complete detachment from familial connections led to more sadness. He became bitter, and rebellious. The odd duck in a sea of swans, he learned to cope by making noise, and celebrating his strange tendencies. In his lonely, little world, he was the king, and they were his subjects. He lived his life, avoiding the conventions of his family, thereby drawing further within himself, and pushing them further away.

                So from the very beginning of his consciousness, this lonely boy was used to being alone. He really had never known anything else.

                Isolation from his family and his inherently rebellious nature were the catalysts that caused even more distance between himself and others. He began doing things that he was not proud of, mostly for the purpose of being numb.

                Of course, he found people, and places, and adventures along his way who he loved. Often, they were simply there to cover up the beasts of his sadness. And some of them stayed for a while. And some of them didn’t. Girls, boys, everything in between. Substitutions for each of the many things he had lost over the years. The lonely boy was young—but he felt as though he had already been alive for at least fifty years. This could be why he sometimes felt like he could die young, and be completely fine. More than fine, in fact. He had seen and done a great many bad things in his 23 years. What was the point of growing old? Growing old meant losing control, and there was nothing glamorous or beautiful about being decrepit.

                So he felt deep in his soul that he would simply never want to grow old. If little Peter Pan could do it, then he could as well.

                He believed himself to be successful, at least for a little while. Slowly and meticulously he built a castle around his heart. The walls were one hundred feet tall, and twelve feet thick. There was a moat, and there were sentries. All measures were taken for absolute security. Solitude, at its’ finest.

                Little Peter wanted no visitors in his fortress of solitude. Visitors meant he could live his short and childish life alone. People meant leaving detachment far behind. And that would not do—it would not do at all. Peter lived a few months in the castle that he was so damn proud of. It cheered his lonesome heart to see that even those people he had formerly let in could no longer walk through the cracks in the walls of step over the gates. It was finally big enough to keep everyone out.

                Thus, the lonely boy was finally, really, truly alone.

                One day, after the boy had perfected the walls around his heart, he happened to meet a boy he had never seen before. The boy instantly cared for Peter and refused to leave him alone. Peter felt the inevitable pull of friendship—and try as he might, he could not seem to resist. He gave in, but just for this one, very special boy. He let kinship form, and hoped everything would end there. One of his walls was already springing a leak.

                Incidentally, it did not end there. With the friendship of the sweet boy came a group of girls who took to him instantly. He did not understand why they all seemed so fond of him, but he reluctantly let them inside the gates of his castle as well. They were all quite pleased with this development, and began to help themselves to the beautiful flowers that grew just inside the castle walls. Peter protested, but they didn’t seem to hear him. They lauded the gentle beauty of the flower and ignored Peter when he claimed that the flowers were for no one but himself. He had tended to the flowers so carefully, although truthfully he had never noticed their beauty until the girls pointed it out.

                With each sweet girl, and each tiny flower plucked from the ground, another crack appeared in his carefully cultivated exterior. He scrambled around, desperately trying to patch all the walls together again. He managed to keep most of it intact, but not all of it.

                On an otherwise uneventful summer day, the lonely boy met a very thoughtful girl. He could see on her face that she harbored a great and terrible fear, although he could not be sure what it was that scared her so deeply. She kept the fear inside her though, and never spoke of it. Instead, she smiled and stepped inside the castle gates.

                She intrigued him so much that he didn't try to stop her.

                He got to know the thoughtful girl and realized that she too had walls around her heart. They were nowhere near as high or thick as his, but there were walls nonetheless.  He began to notice that while his walls were starting to crumble and crack, hers were doing the same. The phenomenon scared him, but he cautiously let it happen.

                As luck would have it, the two of them ended up alone one day, and they began discussing deep and secret things, opening themselves to each other in ways they never had before. Peter looked at the thoughtful girl and saw that before his eyes she appeared to be glowing. As though the moon were inside of her, a sweet silvery light emanated from her hair and her fingertips and her eyes and ears and toes. Her laugh even sounded like she swallowed the moon. The lonely boy stared in wonder at her beauty, and realized that he was falling deep into her, and that sensation grew until he didn’t know what to do or say to her.  All he could do was hold her hand. But then, she smiled at him and his heart grew cold. In her smile he could see that her walls were completely gone, and she was letting him see her in her entirety. Hiding was a thing of the past, and nothing had prepared him for the look of complete adoration and trust on her face. He knew that he could not be what she needed, and therefore he needed to run; he needed to run far away from the responsibilities and the love. Loneliness did not bode well for trust and growing up.

                So he ran. He watched her face fall and saw her heart break as he ran, but nothing could stop him from leaving. Because he looked straight ahead as he ran, he never saw the walls around her heart grow almost instantaneously stronger and higher than ever before. His travels took him far away, to a place completely devoid of people who cared about him. He could feel the iciness of his pain slipping away as the old familiar numbness took its’ place.

                The lonely boy tried to enjoy his new life, but his mind kept wandering to the thoughtful girl. One morning he woke up, huddled in a ball and as he blinked his eyes he saw that he was surrounded by his friends—the very friends he had shut out when he ran away from the thoughtful girl. Together, they hugged him and he knew that he could no longer pretend that he was the same callous and bitter man he had once been. He asked them earnestly of how the thoughtful girl was and they warned him that she no longer asked about him. She had met a new boy, a very cheerful boy who didn’t have walls around his heart, or any other part of him.

                The lonely boy wept. She had moved along, and found someone who didn’t run. His friends sat in silence and let him mourn. Suddenly, he felt a strange pulling sensation, right around his stomach. A foreign feeling of longing struck him in the heart and he realized that he might not be able to live this way any longer. Warm arms wrapped around him as his friends answered his unasked question.

                “You can do it”.

                So he ran. This time, he ran towards her. He ran through fields and valleys and swam the sea, not resting for even a moment so that he could find her before she was gone forever. It took him days—he had not realized how far from her he had gone. Eventually, he landed safely from his journey, right outside her home. He could see her inside, with a guarded smile, speaking to the cheerful boy. He really was quite cheerful. In a moment of hesitation, the lonely boy stood staring, unsure of how to proceed. It could have been simply fear, or it could have also been that bursting in would change everything, and right now he could perfectly see the way that her hair fell across her shoulders, and he might never be allowed to see her again.

                Before he could make a decision, his feet had chosen for him. They propelled him towards the door and he ran in with a purpose.

                The thoughtful girl, stood up in alarm. With regret, the lonely boy realized that she was longer trying to hide her fear from the world, but that she was wholly and unashamedly frightened. And it was all his fault. The cheerful boy inquired, but his questions fell on the unhearing ears of the frightened girl and the lonely boy, who only saw each other. The lonely boy took her in his arms, and tried to speak, but no words came out. She waited patiently as she was wont to do. He looked down and saw that there were flowers in his hand. They were the flowers from inside his castle and he wanted to give them to her. She knew without words what this meant and she hugged his sweet, troubled soul.

                “I knew you would come back”

                Peter felt the walls of his heart crack completely in two as it grew in size. His heart was so full that nothing could have stopped it from growing.

                And so, the lonely boy was no longer lonely, and the frightened girl was no longer frightened. Together they were simply Peter and Anita.