The Constant Lover

There wasn’t a better time to fall in love. It was Summer. The year of 2016 on the summer of session C. There was some kind of quiet during this Summer in the pavilion amidst all the school rooms without teachers in them. I pick up my bag and sit down enjoying the breeze. It’s this sudden melancholia. This feeling of Spring in the Summertime. I sit down at the bench just waiting for Professor Harmon to come along and open the door. It didn’t make me feel any better that I was alone. Sometimes, I would’ve wished to be alone. But, better to be alone than an outcast. The sweet Summer air breezes through my disheveled hair as I try to fix it up a bit. It was the same. It felt the same. I couldn’t mistake it for another Summer. It was the same.

The same Summer came up about seven years ago for as long as I can remember, and I swear to Jove that I was sober at the time. Bits and fragmented pieces of memorable moments had come up at the time. Meanwhile, a burly man with a Navy seals backpack came and had decided to sit on the bench next to me. Another flashback. No, it’s better to be safe than sorry. His eyes were like burning coals and onyx just like this one’s. Kristoffer had jet-black hair and really deep but cold onyx eyes. This guy’s eyes were anxious and yet piercingly uncertain. His hair was tousled in reddish-brown curls with a lot of muscle, but not compared to Kristoffer’s smooth pale skin and spiked up jet black hair. I went up to this guy and had asked him for his name anyway and shook his hand. His name was CJ. He was nothing like Kristoffer. He was more friendly, more cowboy-like despite his Italian muscles. He had explained that he had come from Bethesda, Italy and that the office at the University had some trouble taking in
his associate’s degree. He also liked to talk.

Dear CJ,
I didn’t take the time we had, had together for granted. I seriously had loved talking to you and I just wish we could’ve connected better.

The second day of class came and we started sharing what we wrote in our notebooks and then we started sharing our ideas together. Sometimes think about what could’ve happened in our futures if he hadn’t had left. Much like Kristoffer, he had disappeared. Kristoffer had this vampiric way of luring you in while this guy had a way of cheering you up with one approach. Kristoffer was beautiful; a work of art compared to this large and very burly man. But this man in one sentence was beautiful in some ways. For one thing, his innocence proved right and he brought his words to life. Kristoffer although a very beautiful soul that liked to help people had a far away essence to him. Almost supernatural. It was exactly four years ago again, and my heart broke for the man sitting in front of me. CJ had worn a black shirt that day and navy blue jeans on one occasion. It is a feeling hard to describe as is the nostalgia I had last felt since I last called out to Kristoffer. He was my treasure; my beginnings of all beginnings; the laugher in my throat and the reason why I smile. Justus although was very talented with words. He loved God and he loved comic books. The best thing about CJ was that he had cheered me up unlike many other people I’ve met. But Kristofer was something I wanted to explore. I soon had wanted to know his birthday, what he liked, why he was here on island and what he looked for in a woman. I wanted to know the places he’d been to, his experiences, his sexual urges all his fantasies wrapped up in one. I wanted to know his interests, what he thought about the stars; everything. Kristoffer was a very mysterious figure, but Justus was open. He loved to talk to me. CJ was open to everything; ask P.K. Harmon. Justus Casino was a medical surgeon in the navy with two children and a wife. Like I said, it was better to be safe than sorry.

Dear CJ,
If you’re heartbroken depending on the circumstances, I’m very sorry. I didn’t mean to be so cold at the beach to talk about Kristoffer. Besides, don’t you have children and a wife? I’m sorry Justus. I didn’t mean to break a heart.

At the beach, I told Justus that the waves reminded me of Kristoffer’s mood. The way the waves had this emotional surge; how the tide was low and sometimes high; but then as you delve deeper into the waters, this tremendous force of emotion dived deep into the heart of your soul; and the way the current grew calm after the waves had finally crashed into the deep blue seas and he suddenly got angry at me. I‘ll never know why but Justus wasn’t an islander. I was always attracted to new people and I loved being open and that was how Kristoffer made me feel. The real problem was I was just too open and Justus had hated the fact that the waves reminded me of Kristoffer. I missed him, and I still do. The face of porcelain, the hair as black as midnight, and I guess Kristoffer was depressed and lonely, but I tragically and desperately wanted to fill those holes and gaps. I wanted to break down those walls that kept him from talking. I wanted to break his world down with love. Kristoffer didn’t have many friends, and he
seemed cold and calculated. But I didn’t seem to mind and he didn’t seem to care. He used to smoke at the tree in the middle of campus. It’s hard to explain but Kristoffer was this lover of life and Justus was this lover of nature.

Dear Kristoffer,
There are some days I had hoped to see you again. You were mine. My love but I guess it couldn’t work out that way. I’m sorry I had left. It wasn’t because of Alexea. It was because you were breaking my heart and it reflected upon my health until I was mentally unstable.

I felt depressed because I wouldn’t be able to see him again. Kristoffer was a wonderful person and I could not have asked for more from him. Sure he was moody, but I could understand why. His family life was very unsupportive. According to Kristoffer, he had a family that didn’t care much. There was one time when he had cut himself and I was worried that he wasn’t getting it treated. I know he liked one girl in our class in particular though. Her name was Alexis. She had black hair colored or dyed blonde and a round face with wide, questioning eyes when things got serious. He told me he had liked her and I had stopped hanging out with him for a while. The problem was I didn’t want to get involved. I tried to take my classes seriously and be a diligent student but I couldn’t, so I had left college for four more years and then all of a sudden in my sophomore year as a beginner with thirty-eight credits, I had just met CJ. I had finally picked up the fact that I had to be in the classroom and become just that, a diligent student so I weighed out my priorities and I had found out that I could still talk to someone and still keep that relationship. I kept my love life dry and I thought that waiting for Kristoffer was a waste of time. I’ll miss him but as the days progressed I had gotten over him. It
got hard trying to concentrate but with my grade status, my own thoughts had finally kicked in. I was recovering from a lost heart into what I thought was an abysmal climax as I kept searching for what I was looking for. I was looking in fact, for Kristoffer. Despite my efforts he had gone away. I kept thinking that maybe he was on the media, but I guess not.

It was very transgressional just sitting where he used to sit nearby the tree on the grass, sometimes on the tree trunks where it was mostly mossy at the time that I had met him. It was finally official. He had gone and left me there to cry. Dreaming as I can recall was not that easy. Just obsessively wondering where Kris could be was an obsession. Now that I am in class I look back. What if I had not met Kris? I resented myself for even asking the question.

Dear CJ,
Psychologically, I was depressed about the things I should’ve and could’ve said, but that was just the beginning for me. Time itself relapsed and regressed into seconds, minutes, hours, days, months and years. You had left and that did not help at all. It made me bitter but it made me stronger because I had felt self-conscious about myself and about more of my life than I had been in years. I got everything done because I finally wanted it all. I wanted to succeed and as I grew colder my heart grew bigger. It’s the feeling when guarding your heart gets hard and like a cold winter’s day you always shall try to make people comfortable although you want your privacy and that was how I felt. Writing in college whether it is work or doodling words on blogs and paper was why I write. I have painted my canvas on a very high expectation that the painting of my life will be a successful one and although the painting of my life’s canvas may not be perfect I know that I am an artist because writing is my art and here I am writing my truth. I am a scorned broken-hearted woman who had looked for love in broken men.

Dear Kristoffer,
I never had a perfect childhood. I had never claimed to have such a life as this. Such a life is a life of pain and mental suffering from my parents; I have searched for love and I never got it. I have found success not on my own but through my college life. Looking for love I have found, is not going to change my world. It can only regress into bitterness as a whole of my life and my heart but most importantly my mind.

Dear CJ,
My mental stability was sadly not stable at the time and it would be too much of a personal essay to write, but I came back. I came back for me. Soon, I will be the disappearing man and I hope no one would look for me. Who would look for me? I am a cold-hearted person to a lot of people and I guess that’s why I am socially awkward and sometimes to others socially inept. I cannot grasp to think that this was about me giving out too much of my life to others and trying to please them because that would’ve been a very selfish thing to do.

Dear Kristoffer,
I don’t think you know who I am anymore despite the heart that was fun-loving, the heart that gave a shit. The heart that cared, I am no longer that woman. If you should ever see me again and feel deceived, look no further. I am your deceit.

In a decaying loss of words writing this letter I felt happy. I had felt empowered. I felt beautiful as I once thought Kristoffer was. The tremendous force and beauty of words is in the mind’s perception. I don’t know what I would say about this epistle of a letter in a creative non-fiction class because all I know is that it may be beautiful to Kristoffer because he may be in a relationship for all I know, but needless to say I am the willful artist and I don’t know if he’ll ever find this non-fictional memoir in a trash bin somewhere where someone who read it will think I was bull-shitting them, and I don’t know of any medical journals who would want this or analyze it for you to see but I do know one thing. I am powerful abstract from what you made me feel like those six years ago. I hope you feel inferior. I hope you feel furious that I still know you, miss you, love you and that I cherish you.

Dear Kristoffer,
As for contact zones, the only safest contact I wish to keep is with myself. Call me a selfish and abstruse pig, but I only wish that I had never met you and I will never make that same mistake of opening up again and trying to make myself humble in your presence. I’ll have you know my dear Kris that I love challenges and I never seem to back down and if I ever find you, my ever-loving Kris I will love you with all my heart; with all that I could be. Humbly and subjectively. I will find you.

I wrote inside the journal P.K. Harmon gave us before class had ended. It wrote,
“Kristoffer, save me. Be my knight in shining armor again. Nobody had noticed that the only person who would understand why I’d write this was me. It was my transition to make up for the past and delve into my mistakes. Kristoffer, save me from a man who doesn’t love me.

Megan