fakediary

David always talked about us moving to the States and starting a new life together.

He lived in Chile, and I was in Japan. We had met three years earlier on an online psychology forum. Of all places, I suppose it made sense that two people like us would find each other somewhere people gathered to understand themselves.

At first, our conversations rarely strayed beyond psychology and personality theories. We talked about attachment styles, childhood development, and why people turned out the way they did. We analyzed ourselves, each other, and practically everyone we had ever known.

Eventually, the conversations became more personal. We started talking about past relationships, our families, our fears, and the things that had happened to us when we were too young to make sense of them.

Looking back, I think we were using each other to heal.

Oh, there was so much healing to be done.

Strangely enough, it worked. We were alike in many ways, but different enough to complement each other. Where one of us struggled, the other often seemed to have an answer. And when neither of us had an answer, we at least had someone who understood the question.

We had both grown up without the kind of care children were supposed to receive. Somewhere along the way, we had learned to raise ourselves. We became our own parents, our own protectors, and, when necessary, our own sources of comfort.

I suppose that was one of the reasons we understood each other so well.

There was something comforting about talking to someone who didn’t need a lengthy explanation for why certain things hurt. David understood the peculiar loneliness of growing up too quickly. He understood how a person could be fiercely independent and still desperately want someone to lean on.

And I understood him.

Or at least, I thought I did.

We spent hours talking, sometimes until the sun came up in one country and went down in the other. The distance between Chile and Japan was enormous, but it rarely felt that way when we were talking. We knew each other’s routines, moods, and little habits. I could often tell something was bothering him from the way he typed a single sentence.

It was an unusual kind of closeness. We knew things about each other that people in our everyday lives didn’t know, yet we had never occupied the same room.

David often spoke about the future with a certainty I found both endearing and bewildering.

He would talk about where we might live in the States, what kind of home we would have, and how different our lives would be once we were finally together. Sometimes he made it sound so simple, as though the only thing separating our present from that future was a plane ticket.

I wasn’t quite as certain.

It wasn’t that I disliked the idea. There was something undeniably appealing about starting over somewhere new, far away from the lives we had already lived. A place where neither of us had to be the people our pasts had made us.

But I had learned early in life that wanting something badly enough didn’t necessarily make it happen.

David, on the other hand, seemed to believe that if two people wanted the same thing, they could find a way.

Perhaps that was another difference between us.

He imagined possibilities. I calculated consequences.

He talked about what could be. I thought about everything that would have to happen first.

And somehow, between his optimism and my caution, we managed to construct an entire life that existed nowhere except in our conversations.

I wonder now whether we were really planning a future together, or whether we were simply giving each other something to look forward to.

There is a difference, although I don’t think either of us recognized it at the time.

When you spend much of your childhood wishing someone would come and make things better, the idea of finally having someone who chooses you can be intoxicating.

Not because you necessarily need to be rescued. We had both done a fairly decent job of rescuing ourselves.

But because, for once, you wouldn’t have to do everything alone.

And maybe that was what David and I were offering each other.

Not salvation, exactly.

Just the possibility of rest.