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.
