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<\/p>\nby Christopher Farrington.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This is a love letter of sorts, even if it doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s the point?\u201d I would often ask at the beginning of our relationship.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf what?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOf life, of anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
You see, before I met Charlie, I lived in a world I didn\u2019t understand or trust. I still don\u2019t, in fairness, but back then I really didn\u2019t see the point of anything. The bad thing\u2014that happened when I was a kid\u2014influenced 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\u2019t worry: I\u2019ll 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.<\/p>\n
Take, for instance, my morning commute to work. On the train I\u2019d 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<\/em> what grief and compassion look like in the twenty-first century? And while I\u2019m 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\u2014and we at least had the courtesy to open a window. Yet this is something everyone is guilty of nowadays\u2014it\u2019s all ages\u2014loading 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\u2014I am in my mid-forties, after all\u2014where\u2019s the respect?<\/p>\n But enough of my social media outrage. I know what you\u2019re thinking: Jesus, this guy is a right miserable bastard!<\/em> The people I work with, at one time or another, have shared that exact sentiment, and Charlie says so too. Sometimes she\u2019ll just let it out: \u201cWill you please stop being such a negative shithead? You\u2019re pissing on my day.\u201d That\u2019s just another thing I love about her.<\/p>\n I\u2019m 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\u2019ve 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\u2019m no longer religious\u2014the bad thing saw to that\u2014so I couldn\u2019t get onboard with the life after death thing either, much as I\u2019d love to now. Still, I do envy those people who hold a genuine religious belief; it\u2019s certainly more appealing than the dark empty nothingness that I\u2019m sure awaits us. Although\u2014humour me for a moment\u2014the 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\u2019t want to double-down on religion, I really don\u2019t. 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.<\/p>\n There are times when I secretly hope death is like in Beetlejuice<\/em>. 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\u2019m not deluded\u2014I know the prospect of that deathly reality is slim\u2014but hey, nobody really knows for sure, so here\u2019s to hoping.<\/p>\n Anyway, people told me I was depressed, a notion I\u2019d take onboard with a shrug of the shoulders; I didn\u2019t 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\u2019s length. My life was an exercise in getting through each day and nothing more.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s no need to go into how we met and fell in love, nor any need to share the soppy details. That\u2019s not my style, as you may have guessed. Expressing emotions isn\u2019t my strong point. During our first year together, Charlie said: \u201cYou\u2019re emotionally unavailable, cut off from the rest of the world. I don\u2019t know why that is, but when you\u2019re ready to step back inside, just know that I\u2019m here for you.\u201d It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me up to then, and in fact it\u2019s 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\u2019s no point to life.<\/p>\n Yes, we will die: it\u2019s the one fate we all share, something I can safely say terrifies me. And what happens when we die? Honestly, I don\u2019t think it will be my Beetlejuice<\/em> 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\u2019t always show it on the surface. It\u2019s not been easy, and yes, I still moan and grumble and offer up my cynicisms. \u201cI think you\u2019re being harsh,\u201d 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\u2019m being cynical, it feels so, so different to be cynical with Charlie.<\/p>\n Just briefly, because I need to get this off my chest: what\u2019s 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\u2019t they realise this? I drove back to my parents\u2019 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\u2019re compensating for, it doesn\u2019t wash with me. And, for balance, ridiculously slow drivers are just as bad, driving at a crawl, backing up the traffic\u2014and don\u2019t get me started on wagons overtaking each other on the motorway\u2014it drives me crazy\u2014but let\u2019s leave it there and get back on track.<\/p>\n With Charlie in my life, the bad thing doesn\u2019t rear its ugly head as often as it used to. Sometimes it\u2019ll even lay dormant for weeks on end. Charlie broke down my psychological walls and upended my reliance on movies, books, runs\u2014my reprieves. She showed me that life wasn\u2019t 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, \u201cJust because our time on this earth is short and there\u2019s certain things we have no control over, it doesn\u2019t mean our lives are worthless. Life is about love.\u201d Her words clicked in my head and sparked a feeling the likes of which I\u2019d never felt before. She made me believe that the bad thing didn\u2019t<\/em> have to define me, not if I didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n The last of anything is inevitable: our last drink, our last meal, the last time we\u2019ll hold each other, the last time we\u2019ll 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\u2019t help it. I\u2019ll 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\u2014the happy memories with my love that still lie in wait. What\u2019s the point of life? Charlie says it best: it\u2019s all about love.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ABOUT THE AUTHOR You see, before I met Charlie, I lived in a world I didn\u2019t understand or trust. I still don\u2019t, in fairness, but back then I really didn\u2019t see the point of anything. The bad thing\u2014that happened when I was a kid\u2014influenced 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\u2019t worry: I\u2019ll 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.<\/p>\n A short story by Christopher Farrington<\/b>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44448,"featured_media":114662,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44448"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114491"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114663,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114491\/revisions\/114663"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/farrington.jpg\")
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\nChristopher Farrington<\/strong> 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<\/em>, Bandit Fiction<\/em>, Storgy<\/em>, and Confluence Magazine<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"