by Christopher Farrington.
This is a love letter of sorts, even if it doesn’t seem that way initially, so bear with me. When I first met my wife, Charlie, over six years ago now, she said I had a tired outlook on life. That’s one of the things I love about Charlie, her diplomatic approach, when a more accurate description of how I viewed the world would be: cynically.
“What’s the point?” I would often ask at the beginning of our relationship.
“Of what?”
“Of life, of anything.”
You see, before I met Charlie, I lived in a world I didn’t understand or trust. I still don’t, in fairness, but back then I really didn’t see the point of anything. The bad thing—that happened when I was a kid—influenced this to a certain extent, but it would be remiss of me to attribute all my shortcomings to that moment. No, my perception of the world was shaped over many, many years. Don’t worry: I’ll spare you the details of what molded my personality. Just be assured that those experiences left me feeling very disillusioned with life. It was all aspects of life too, not one thing in particular; not the big or the small, or the irrelevant, but everything. Everything just seemed so empty and stupid and pointless.
Take, for instance, my morning commute to work. On the train I’d look around at everyone glued to their phones, scrolling endlessly, doomed by technology, pulling duckfaces for selfies, yearning for likes and comments. Allow me, if you will, to digress, but why has it become acceptable to react to bad news with emojis? Headline: man found dead on street with multiple stab wounds. Cue sadface emojis from the masses. Is this really what we are now? Is this what grief and compassion look like in the twenty-first century? And while I’m at it, when did people start listening to music and watching videos on public transport without headphones? I mean, yes, when I was a kid, a group of us would sit at the back of the school bus and smoke, but we were rogue teenagers—and we at least had the courtesy to open a window. Yet this is something everyone is guilty of nowadays—it’s all ages—loading videos from Twitter and Instagram and YouTube, so the entire carriage can quote-unquote enjoy the collective experience. I mean, seriously, at the risk of sounding old—I am in my mid-forties, after all—where’s the respect?
But enough of my social media outrage. I know what you’re thinking: Jesus, this guy is a right miserable bastard! The people I work with, at one time or another, have shared that exact sentiment, and Charlie says so too. Sometimes she’ll just let it out: “Will you please stop being such a negative shithead? You’re pissing on my day.” That’s just another thing I love about her.
I’m much better now, of course, but back then, before Charlie, at the time of those morning commutes, I found it hard to shake the malaise that hazed my mind. We work, we exist, we die. The world is going to pot, we’ve well and truly fucked it, inequality is rife wherever you look and social media has taken over civilisation. Well done, everyone. That was pretty much my viewpoint. In a nutshell, life was hopeless and without meaning. And I’m no longer religious—the bad thing saw to that—so I couldn’t get onboard with the life after death thing either, much as I’d love to now. Still, I do envy those people who hold a genuine religious belief; it’s certainly more appealing than the dark empty nothingness that I’m sure awaits us. Although—humour me for a moment—the whole God thing is a bit bizarre, because no God that actually exists would allow the world to spiral out of control so spectacularly in the first place. Still, I don’t want to double-down on religion, I really don’t. Every week until age sixteen I attended church in my Sunday best. Every. Single. Week. I come from a religious family; I grew up in a devout Catholic community, the kind that would turn a blind eye to the bad thing. But, all right, enough about that.
There are times when I secretly hope death is like in Beetlejuice. I like the idea of being assigned a case worker in the afterlife, someone to meet with and conjure up plans to haunt the inhabitants of my former home. I’m not deluded—I know the prospect of that deathly reality is slim—but hey, nobody really knows for sure, so here’s to hoping.
Anyway, people told me I was depressed, a notion I’d take onboard with a shrug of the shoulders; I didn’t consider myself depressed in the slightest, just numb. I kept myself to myself and watched movies and read books and ran three times a week. Keeping that schedule kept the bad thing at arm’s length. My life was an exercise in getting through each day and nothing more.
So why I am telling you all this? Well, as I mentioned at the start, this is a love letter of sorts: a love letter to Charlie. There’s no need to go into how we met and fell in love, nor any need to share the soppy details. That’s not my style, as you may have guessed. Expressing emotions isn’t my strong point. During our first year together, Charlie said: “You’re emotionally unavailable, cut off from the rest of the world. I don’t know why that is, but when you’re ready to step back inside, just know that I’m here for you.” It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me up to then, and in fact it’s not a stretch to say Charlie saved me. She opened me up to a world I never knew existed, one which has since filled my heart with hope. When I think back now to that time before, I can see how detached I actually was, plagued by dark thoughts and the bad thing. And I was certainly wrong about one fundamental belief: the belief that there’s no point to life.
Yes, we will die: it’s the one fate we all share, something I can safely say terrifies me. And what happens when we die? Honestly, I don’t think it will be my Beetlejuice scenario, nor do I believe the pearly gates of Heaven will be lying in wait. But does that mean life down here is truly meaningless? Not at all. Every day with Charlie is a treasure, even if I don’t always show it on the surface. It’s not been easy, and yes, I still moan and grumble and offer up my cynicisms. “I think you’re being harsh,” Charlie said to me just last week, after I claimed the way people drive is a true reflection of who they really are. Fast, erratic, irresponsible drivers are basically selfish wankers in everyday life; I honestly think that. Yet even when I’m being cynical, it feels so, so different to be cynical with Charlie.
Just briefly, because I need to get this off my chest: what’s the deal anyway with drivers who get up your arse? Why do they have to be so close and aggressive and make a big show of overtaking on narrow winding roads, revving their engines to the max? Petrol prices are extortionate these days, don’t they realise this? I drove back to my parents’ house last month, purposely sticking to sixty per hour as part of an experiment. Do you know how much longer the journey took? Seven minutes. For the sake of seven minutes: back off, dickheads! Whatever you’re compensating for, it doesn’t wash with me. And, for balance, ridiculously slow drivers are just as bad, driving at a crawl, backing up the traffic—and don’t get me started on wagons overtaking each other on the motorway—it drives me crazy—but let’s leave it there and get back on track.
With Charlie in my life, the bad thing doesn’t rear its ugly head as often as it used to. Sometimes it’ll even lay dormant for weeks on end. Charlie broke down my psychological walls and upended my reliance on movies, books, runs—my reprieves. She showed me that life wasn’t just about getting through each day. No, she showed me it was to be seized while we had the chance and appreciated as fully as possible. One day she said to me, “Just because our time on this earth is short and there’s certain things we have no control over, it doesn’t mean our lives are worthless. Life is about love.” Her words clicked in my head and sparked a feeling the likes of which I’d never felt before. She made me believe that the bad thing didn’t have to define me, not if I didn’t want it to. She offered me an alternative path, a road paved with possibilities and meaning. It was Charlie who tore down the barriers that kept me isolated, shut off from other people; it was Charlie who showed me it was okay to love and to feel, to be present in each moment, to move on past the bad thing and not look back at it at all. This is the beautiful influence she wields over my life now.
The last of anything is inevitable: our last drink, our last meal, the last time we’ll hold each other, the last time we’ll wake together, or take a walk, or go to the movies, or laugh. And even just imagining those last things makes me sad. Sometimes, of course, I can’t help it. I’ll lie in bed and think of a life like the one I used to have, a life without Charlie beside me. It hurts. A sickening pain squeezes my lungs and sucks the air from my body. But whenever those thoughts surface, I do my utmost to bury them deep within myself again and think of the better times ahead—the happy memories with my love that still lie in wait. What’s the point of life? Charlie says it best: it’s all about love.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christopher Farrington lives in Cragg Vale, a village in West Yorkshire, where he takes inspiration from the haunted woods and moorland. He has developed a fascination for unusual scenarios and the supernatural, in addition to exploring the moments in life that tip us over the edge. His work has previously featured in Typishly, Bandit Fiction, Storgy, and Confluence Magazine.
