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- Story Listed as: True Life For Adults
- Theme: Love stories / Romance
- Subject: Death / Heartbreak / Loss
- Published: 05/27/2022
Nathan's Geschichte
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Growing up in Kaiserslautern, alone was a feeling he knew all too well. Never-ending corn fields and open skies make for a lovely setting, but without friends to enjoy them with, they tend to leave a young, sociable boy dissatisfied. He didn’t want to settle for dreaming alone while wandering the rows of meticulously-planted crops; he wanted to tell jokes, have adventures, and talk of the future with someone. As he grew into a young man, however, his friends from the academy went their separate ways, his family was pulled to a different region, and he remained in Kaiserslautern. He and the open fields, peaceful blue skies, and an empty heart.
One day, almost by pure happenstance, he met a beautiful girl from the city of Singen named Charlotte. Charlotte quickly became a best friend and then some. Someone whom he, after the first encounter, wanted to see again and again—and he did just that every day thereafter. The two of them talked for hours as never ending as the cornfields and never bored. As they walked and talked, the hours turned to days, the days to weeks, and the weeks to months. Soon enough, Charlotte knew him better than anyone in the whole world. Nobody had ever been such a good listener, and the more she listened, the more she seemed to turn open the faucet of his heart until he poured out his whole soul.
What made Charlotte so special was the way she sought to understand. She was slow to reply, yet quick to ask clarifying questions. Her only aim was to fully grasp his thoughts without criticism or opinionation. Being an intelligent but rather sensitive young man, he oftentimes preferred that—to work out his own solution to struggles as he talked about them with someone he trusted. She never judged or scorned, and he knew he could tell her every deep-set worry of his in total safety and without the slightest fear of vulnerability.
Two and a half years later, he was suddenly confronted with the sickening truth he had once suspected, but long since smothered with blind trust: Charlotte wasn't who she claimed to be. The fact of the matter was, he had never actually met Charlotte in person. In a day of technological wonder, they had built the deepest of personal connections over phone calls and video chats. Every deep conversation on a long walk was through a speaker, and each night the sunset was shared through a camera as he would stand under his favorite tree in all of Kaiserslautern and longingly look west toward Singen.
He was wounded deeply and the months to follow were painful. They met in person and he learned what she truly looked like, where she really lived, and even what her real name was. He tried in vain to wrap his head around how the best and seemingly most genuine of friends could lie day after day for so long. Alana cried with him and explained that she was never able to muster the courage to tell him the truth in fear of losing his love. She said her love was and always had been honest. She tried desperately to atone for her deceit and do anything to repair the hurt, broken, and confused heart of the boy she wanted to see smile again. Yet after two and a half years of lies, what could she possibly say that would carry any sort of convincing tenor? What could she say that shouldn't be thrown with the rest of her lies into the bin of yesterday's beliefs?
In later months, interestingly enough, he learned that although many facts he was told by her were lies, much of the rest was genuine. She had the same voice, the same laugh, the same devotion, and still that same ability to listen and understand. He soon realized that he couldn't simply delete her out of his life like one might suggest after such a betrayal. He briefly tried, only to find himself in Kaiserslautern with its infinite skies and resting acres, alone again. The only moments he felt able to forget his aches were when talking with her once more. He had come to need that connection, to be dependent on it. He felt that, should he try tearing the deep roots of Alana out of his life, he would not be able to develop such a connection ever again. Though she understood his hesitation to consider re-fueling their relationship, the mere thought of letting her go completely left him feeling sick. He was stuck between two impossible paths, unable to step in either direction, and depressed without hope of improvement.
In the meantime, she began studying at a school near the fantastical city of Singen he had long hoped to see. Singen had been, in his mind, nothing short of heaven. Not because of how beautiful it was—and it was beautiful—but because of who he had hoped awaited him there. To go there after learning she didn’t exist seemed pointless, merely a painful reminder of a dream gone by. At her offer, however, he traveled across the country to "face his demons." She drove him down to Scottsdale, where hand in hand they walked toward Charlotte's home. He knew every turn and every building, he had imagined himself walking there a million times while looking at online maps. Gazing up at the stonework, everything felt ghostly; it was all he had ever wanted, yet so empty. With dusk setting in, they climbed the wooden staircase to the window up top where Charlotte would have secluded herself for their calls. Standing there, he turned to face Kansas as the sun slowly set to his back in the west. Alana stood behind him and spoke quietly as he held a photo of Charlotte and closed his eyes. After all those years, Nathan was finally on the other end of the call.
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Shirley Smothers
06/10/2022
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