Confirmation bias

I think back to the start. So much time has passed since then and the end. The space between those points has transformed experience into something cinematic, fantastical, other worldly. A script I know the outlines of, the details muddled, facts transformed into something fundamentally other than they were.

This recollection is being formed in that space rather than the space where I sit here now, older, perhaps changed, perhaps not. Connected to that girl back then but removed from the reality of the rawness and immediacy of those moments.

The start takes place on a piano stool placed in front of a large, unwieldy desktop computer - larger than a microwave and smaller than a single oven, but not by much. The piano stool fabric is scratchy. I sit on it as the day fades into the small hours of night and by the time I’ve finished I leave with its imprints marking my thighs. Communication is often slow. I have a visceral memory of the feeling of the material and the long pauses between messages often spent looking at my thighs. It is the first time I see the small dimpled cellulite marks on them. I am repelled but fascinated - how can something hidden reveal itself so brazenly? It stirs an emotion I can’t quite pinpoint. By this stage my internal monologue is well versed in monitoring and judging the many ways in which I don’t measure up so I understand this new discovery is another disappointment. Yet it’s more than this. There is a fear in the fact that it can reveal itself publicly, without warning or fanfare. Silently waiting to put itself on display if you spend too long pressing yourself into the right type of surface.

There was something of that feeling in communicating with him. There were no video chats. It took a month before I found a local printshop who could achieve the magic of turning a physical photo into a digital one. Performing personality through words meant that you could try on any mode of being you chose. The anonymous self was authentic and without challenge for as long as you remained in the small electronic world of message boards. Yet even there with the freedom to hide, to invent, I remained intensely myself. I who have never wanted to be myself, given the opportunity to create a new me, simply didn’t. If I could have found the words to change my thoughts, my feelings, write myself into a happy place I would have already done so. I was as trapped in myself online as I was everywhere else.

Him, though, he was always utterly who he was. That sounds like I could tell you what I mean, describe his inner nature. But he was always a mystery. When we first began talking he would appear under a different Compuserve account, each with a different handle, one.baby.to.another., endless.nameless, hysterical.and.useless, although that last one could have been mine, we were united in our teenage angst.

At first I was confused, how could someone that was obviously so cool, so tech savvy, be interested in an innocent, inexperienced country girl such as me? I thought it must be a trick, that this person wearing his emotional baggage like a carefully considered outfit, Nirvana lyrics, floppy hair and boy band looks would end up being a balding, sweaty, middle aged man typing from his mum’s basement. But with each further message dropping into my life of endless days, stuck at home, staying up all night, watching Marilyn Manson, and for you, trips to the 7-eleven and Blockbuster, composing your university application with the start of Goodfellas as far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster, I began to wonder, could it really be that we had somehow found a thing that was true, a possibility, an escape?

Eventually I decided to make that escape real. I was soon to be leaving Scotland, alone, perhaps for the first time, to stay with my best friend in Brighton. Suddenly you were in reach. On the way back home, I decided to remain in London. We arranged to meet at Kings Cross Thames Link. We may have teased each other I’ll be standing by the entrance of platform 3, with a carnation. Your version was a bright blue raincoat. It was summer. The day was hot, so that when I first hugged you, you smelled slightly of sweaty plastic and nerves. We stole glances at each other and our faces stopped working. Mine had frozen into a twitchy grin. I couldn’t make my mouth form a straight line. It ached with the effort of its new turned upside position. I was out of practice. At some point we started holding hands. Yours were small and dainty, like an animal paw nestled sleeping in mine. I felt like I was leading you even though it was your town, your area. The day was ticking on. I don’t think either of us wanted to acknowledge it, perhaps if we ignored it, it would leave us be, here in the now. You took me to Liverpool Street, we rode the train to Ilford. I liked the bits before, when we descended the underground and you stood, protective, wrapping your arms around me. I was so happy I didn’t think I could contain it, my body was going to melt, slip right out of your embrace.

We walked along your street, it wasn’t the London I expected, it was wide streets and family houses and normal life. We went inside. I met your sister, your mum, your gran. You had just got kittens and we both went out the back to play with them in the garden. Forrest, I think one of them was called. But I had eyes only for you. I was on drugs, tripping through every moment, floating, serene: it was fantastical. I was in another dimension and you were right with me. So when the time came for you to see me off, we had made it all the way back to Kings Cross proper this time, we stood at the barriers, stuck in position. I knew I could move but I no longer understood why I should. Back home was misery, solitude, pain, greyness, nothing. Here was everything. I chose everything and we both sighed, relieved. I returned home with you. I was always going to.

Forgive me, but I’m going to skip over what happened next, at least for now. They say you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, and spoiler alert, there is now finally, an end. I never understood that by the way, surely if you were going to say bad things about someone the perfect time would be when they were no longer around to hear it?

I spent so little time with him really. Maybe 6 years? Would it even add up to that much, all told? I can’t shake the feeling that throughout that time it was always me that pushed too much, asked too much, wanted too much, talked too much. He was never someone without opinion, he didn’t like being challenged and because I couldn’t stop that part of me, eventually the hole in the wall he punched that first time I kept going ended up in his hands around my neck. Sorry. I said I wouldn’t talk about that part.

I hurt him a lot I think. I worry that I changed the course of his life fundamentally, that I’m the reason that he ended up working in retail rather than in media, or something else that should have been his future.

Over the years, I continued to reach out, I continued to push for more. He didn’t ignore me. He would respond. And so it went, intermittent contact over the years until the 4 August 2023 when I sent him “Conversation 16” by the National and asked him if he’d like to come to Edinburgh some day. He replied to say that for the last 18 months he’d been unwell. That’s a year and a half, so since February 2022, right? He went on to explain that he had stage 4 metastasised lung cancer and that all his care from here on out was palliative.

On hearing that it was hard not to think, that on some level, he was tricking me yet again. That he was saying that to hurt me, that of course it wasn’t true, that he was actually typing that from his conservatory while his beautiful wife and kids were doing the weekly shop at Waitrose.

Despite my doubts, I tried to be there. I tried to absorb, without fear, all those messages about his health and checks and medical details I work so hard to avoid in my own life. I as someone who works so hard not to see a side effects message. I tried. I tried.

When I asked to see him he told me that would be weird which objectively yes, of course. He then said “you’re only the fourth person to be told, and that’s only because of how much of an impact that time of my life had on me and that I don’t want you to just think I disappeared and started ignoring you at some point. When I sort all my stuff over the years I will probably have some stuff I’d like you to have though if you want me to send me your address?”

Truth be told I managed a whole week before I tried to find out more details about his life as it was then. He kept evading so many questions and as is my wont I couldn’t not try to find out more. And so it goes. 11 August 2023 was the last time I heard from him.

And now I will never hear from again. There will be no things coming in the post even though I sent him my address.

No goodbye. The end.