Charly's Language

There Is No One Like You

I run, I run fast, as if I was being chased. But what was chasing me was inside my head, I couldn't shake it. I run even faster, through the park, along the river's stream. I pushed it, and pushed it, for a while, until my hands had tickles, and my legs cramps, my eyes started to blur as I struggled to breathe. The piercing ringing in my ears was deafening me, I didn't stop. My heart pounding violently in my chest: an unnatural and loud beat. It hurt. My stomach stirred, ready to make me vomit. So eager I was to forget, my body hurt, and it felt good. Finally, for an instant, my mind was too busy keeping me alive to remember. The dryness of my throat and the sharp pain on my side made me stop. I didn't want to, running like that felt good, just running, until nothing else.

I moved back into my dorm; my roommate had joined a fraternity, so I had it to myself. Still, it felt like a box, like a cage. I had her phantom following me around for so long, all the time, anything I thought I said out loud, I said to her. I said it out loud only to remind myself she was gone. She sent me a message, telling me she made it okay, and that from that moment on she wasn't going to distract me anymore. That she knew if we kept talking, she was going to be weak and come back. She said she wouldn't reach me until she had good news, until she was sure she was over it. She said I needed to focus on myself, on my studies and work.

She made me promise I wasn't going to wait, but I did for so long. I thought if she came back, I wanted to be there waiting. I was determined to build something for her to come back to. I kept to myself, kept training and studying as much as I could. For the summer, I went back home and worked with my uncle. He tried to encourage me, telling me I did the right thing, but he noticed the change. He told me I shouldn't be so bitter, so inaccessible to everyone else. I just worked, nothing else, I was still trying to be worthy of her. I wanted to become somebody; somebody she'd be proud to be with.

I never thought any less of her, I never ever took her down from that pedestal she had inside my head, the absolute queen of everything. I waited, I worked only towards a future, but my body urged for release. It took me months to gather the courage to be with someone else, it felt like cheating, it always did. When I finally did, some silly girl from class, I panicked. She was all I thought about, I was awkward, disconnected, clumsy... I was so used to her body, it felt wrong, it felt disappointing. The way she moved, the way she looked at me, the way she touched me, nothing I could recognize. As soon as I finished, I sorry to her and just dashed out of the door, never to talk to her again.

And she was right, I was angry, very angry. I couldn't be romantic or tender. I was rough and distant. I just wanted release: I didn't want any intimacy. Kissing was the hardest thing to do, it really was. I kept turning my head all the time as if she was watching me. I imagined I was an eye-opener to some girls, about what assholes some men can be. When I couldn't make it work, when I realized they were perhaps even scared of me; I stopped going out on campus altogether. I became one of those creeps, going to strip clubs for a while, hanging out with people way older, and sleeping with women that wouldn't be afraid, usually mature, that would just let me fuck them and nothing else. But every time I was with someone, I had to keep reminding myself, 'it's not Charly, take it easy', and then all I could hear was 'is not Charly'. During all those years in law school, I didn't see the same person twice, so uninterested I was. Time went fast and slow at the same time, and I never stopped thinking about her, there wasn't a day when I didn't think about her. I didn't know where she was, I didn't even know if she was alive. She never responded again; she went completely silent. I told myself, I convinced myself, that if she wasn't alive, I would've known somehow.

I was on the team until the end. Of course, I would never play again the way I did that first season. I became a more mature player and still as captain, we had a strong team but never like at the beginning.