Sharleen and I E-Book

Rolf van der Wind

• Herausgeber: tredition
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 245

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Love wounds and love experiences have this peculiarity - they may be hidden, but they never close; they are always painful, always ready to bleed when touched, and remain fresh and open in the heart. The protagonist crossed a kind of invisible line. He felt as if he had reached a place he never thought he would have to go to. And he didn't know how he got there. It was a strange place because he lost the memories of all. It was a place where it could be tortured for eternity, or he could find dreams and love, something as far away and distant as the star-filled universe he observed every night.

Leseprobe

© 2021 Rolf Van der Wind

Verlag und Druck: tredition GmbH,

Halenreie 40-44, 22359 Hamburg

ISBN

Paperback: 978-3-347-33837-1

Hardcover: 978-3-347-33838-8

e-Book: 978-3-347-33839-5

Das Werk, einschließlich seiner Teile, ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages und des Autors unzulässig. Dies gilt insbesondere für die elektronische oder sonstige Vervielfältigung, Übersetzung, Verbreitung und öffentliche Zugänglichmachung.

You were my sun, the moon and all my stars.

Chapter I

Holding on, letting go.

If someone had screamed my name, I would not have heard it because it was raining as it only rains in this lonely part of the world, rain pouring down cold and wild on a black night.

I left her by the water's edge; I saw her disappear in the distance, watching into the darkness long after the ship was gone.

That moment I realized I was alone, nothing left behind, no hope, no sunshine. It is not the endings that will haunt me but the simple things that faded together, the little moments that made an unforgettable part of the relation fade without one final wave of goodbye.

I wanted to disappear. There was nothing to be saved, not even photographs, nothing more than the memory when this girl fell asleep in my arms. We did not care about the world around us. The feeling was so deep, so far now.

To appreciate the dignity of a relationship also implies admitting the end when it comes. I must bear the ending in my mind, accepting it in my dreams, where the aftertaste still lingers much longer, and all the acceptance cannot take it away.

I left the darkening street, starting to walk, not knowing which way to go, somehow my feet walked the way back to my house with no help from my brain. I did not know the details of tomorrow, but I had hoped for better tomorrows…I told myself, do not lose hope. What I seek, I will find. I repeated in my mind, "Trust your heart." trust those dreams that have helped me do all I have done. Trust your heart and keep hoping because I would do it for me because what I wanted to do is not necessary to prove it to anybody. Silence the world outside you, listen to your inner voice, and see with your heart, love is more significant than any difficulties we may have during one life. I wanted to stay with hope, even on a night like that. I only wanted to be there where my thoughts were clear because I wanted to be a man who has been with a girl in a yellow dress in my dreams, and I could wait for a thousand years if necessary.

All the time I was with her, I knew the precious times had to come to an end sometime. I just never thought the time of parting would be so soon.

It may have been a mistake to give up the love we had. Soon I could regret my decision but wanted to believe that I was not wrong. I tried to think that life is not full of darkness. Deep inside, I knew that she was able to wash away the pain that hurt my heart for a long, long time. I will miss her knowing that I would never see her again, and that night, I would fall asleep as if I would never wake up again because I did not know if I would.

The heavy rain made me feel less alone. Rain is a cloud falling apart drop after drop and pours its shattered pieces down on us.

It made me feel good to know I was not the only one that was falling apart. This feeling in our hearts was not going to be extinguished. There was a girl whose heart was suffering like mine. This pain-sharing time was helping us endure. We knew that being apart would destroy part of ourselves but staying would hurt us more. Parting was going to teach us more about each other. How much we can bear, how much we can endure, and how we could do what was necessary to overcome the difficulties we were facing. I may regret how we ended, but I will never regret spending over three years with her.

I passed a street and then the next. I always took different paths on my way home, but no matter how much I tried that night, I was not consciously walking.

I was only waiting to arrive and take a little comfort knowing that it was not the end but only the beginning. I tried to believe there is no real ending. It is just the place where you stop the story, a moment where you decide to change all around you. The splendid thing about breaking apart, knowing that love was still present, is that you can turn all around and forget. You can erase the page, and it will never have happened.

That night we did not take my car. We decided to stretch the little time we had together and walked to the harbor. Her name was Sharleen. Sharleen was the perfect name for her, the first time I saw her will always remain in my memory. I was attending a speech about new technologies offered at the University of Columbia. I thought for a moment she was a new student who did not know about the assigned seats, but she actually was helping the participants to find each one right place. Standing beside my table was this girl in a long yellow dress, a very vintage look that simultaneously embodied a chic and casual style. She had an elegant look and hardly any makeup. I sat down, ready to say something, but I looked again at her and realized I could not think of anything that would not be out of place or just plain stupid. The name Sharleen means free man, and in many ways, she was precisely that.

She often said to me with a sweet smile on her face, "Your loved girl is a free woman with an autonomous will." And yes, I often used to call her, girl. To keep reminding her that time did not change her; she would be eternally a girl in my eyes.

I was soon going to be home; the rain was slowing down, but I felt water all over, my clothes were completely wet. Undoubtedly as you get older, you learn that rules are made to be broken. We must be bold enough to live life on our terms and never, ever apologize for it. When it came to walking in the rain, nobody would stop me from enjoying it. My thoughts were rushing that night; they were going back and forth in time. For a second, I wondered about the future, then they went back to that day in New York. I remember we met less than a week after, and at that time, I have done nothing but investigate to inquire about her, where she lived, what she did, and where she liked to go. I guess there was a time when my interest in her could have landed me in an asylum or prison, but if this life gives me a chance…all I wanted is to take it. If we do not accept our opportunities, another may never come, and if it turns out to be a mistake? So what! This is life! A whole collection of achievements and mistakes!

From afar, through the rain, I could see the house, now returning that night was so different. I knew she would not be working in her studio; she would not smile the way she did every time I walked into the room. Be it as it may, if we are not ready to accept the challenges and the recurrent changes in our life, we would never learn to become the person we wanted to be.

How to best find ways to describe her and her influence in my life. Like in so many other things, she was a profound artist creating a world of beauty in the little things that only a real artist can perceive. For her, all she made was like poetry that is seen rather than heard or read.

Sharleen was right. She never looked nice while painting. This girl looked like unfinished art that was not supposed to look nice but make you feel something, and what she did was done with love, was well done. It took me time to see things like her. She had a way to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.

In the line of work I do, numbers and code control all my assignment, and it is little room for bringing feelings into zeros and ones. Sharleen would start with something trivial, but she became original nine times out of ten without noticing it. Art is not only how you see your subject but what the artist makes others see. When I asked to explain what she was painting, she would look at me and start laughing. I might as well had asked her to explain the reason for living or asked a software system to define love. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only apparent, thorough watching with open eyes the finished product. Work sometimes sad that captured moments into the future, moments that would have been lost into the past, glimpsed through the eyes of a soul capable of imprinting the moment on an empty canvas.

Sometimes I have the impression that she saw me as a crazy person. I did not worry if people think I am mad. "Sure, you are insane," she said to me. From the first instant I saw you, there was a kind of addicting insanity that lets other people wonder if all you say is true or just a product of not living an ordinary life. My life was not common, but sometimes I had the wish to start all over again. A good beginning would be to become an individual again and not to follow all the paths. Suppose the liberty we appreciate so much means all. In that case, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear, to do things another way, finding your own path is the proper foundation of liberty. I would instead be forced to the inconveniences of experiencing too much freedom than the lack of it.

As I arrived at the house and entered the room, the aroma wafted into the air from canvas and paintbrush and pens used not long ago by Sharleen. Every part of my body felt the emptiness, an emptiness I was not prepared for. Only weeks ago, we were talking about plans for the coming days. Nothing out of the ordinary, but daydreaming was a way to enjoy making plans. Simple goals like going to a nearby lake with a bicycle or walk into the next forest. Something crazier like talking to the trees, reading the memories of the many flawless leaves, taking photographs of animals, visiting a new town, and being one more insignificant pedestrian on the streets of crowded cafés, watching, talking, and searching for the next exciting shop or corner. When you do simple things and enjoy the present things, you see, you forget the world's intricacies.

Incredibly, we dealt with our lives in our unique way only a few days ago. Suddenly, exactly when the second year of the atelier's renting contract was nearing, all shattered into emptiness. Sharleen was facing a crucial moment, and I was not the supporting man I was once. We had stopped making long-term plans; I felt dreams vanishing. It is sad to give them up and watch them die. I knew the end was near. I expected nothing from the start, I expected nothing in the middle, and I expected nothing until the end. Like most of us, I know I am my own worst enemy. If I could

learn to stop waiting for things to end, most probably, I would find the happiness that has always eluded me.

A moment in the screenplay that I could have anticipated but that I was not ready for yet, a phone call that alters your whole life forever changes the road ahead. It does not often occur that someone comes along who is a true friend, but July was that special friend for Sharleen. Mostly we cannot tell the precise moment when a friendship is formed. In Sharleen's case was long ago; July was almost family. She was full of kindness, full of life. She was always there when needed. We knew July meant good in all she did.

My girl had someone who was always motivating her, motivating her to do more, travel more, and treat her the best way she knew. She was a long-time friend. She said what she honestly meant and meant what she said.

Having July come over to visit us was exciting and full of surprises, good surprises, the ones that always try to build something together, not destroy each other. If the outcome was not what we expected, at least you can say we tried, and those memories will bring us stronger together. She sometimes put pressure on us, but honestly, the kind of pressure we required. If pressure forms, diamonds also produced a diamond kind of friendship.

You might like to wait for something new to happen, something to break your routine, and when every day is as the day before, like suspended in time and going your way, something comes along that shatters your life. At that moment, you wish with every cell in your body that your day had not become so unordinary.

The night before, Sharleen told July about the hard time she was having. That she was genuinely considering stopping with the business she so much loved and, most importantly, to break a relation that was heading nowhere. Sometimes life events break your heart. It is strange how a day comes and starts like any other day, but hours later, that reality is like out of your world. This news was extremely unwelcome. There was no need to stay on the phone, and there was not really any point in trying to explain.

After hanging the phone, Sharleen stood for a couple of seconds motionless. Finally, she looked at me. Her eyes were hard, Sharleen looked as if she were about to burst into tears, but she was tough at catching herself; she would let no tears fall, Tom, she said to me, her voice very soft. "I need to go! This time I will go for the last time."

During our love affair, we parted many times, especially at the beginning. She knew about the crazy in me and found forgiveness again and again in her heart. The other factor that made her change her mind so often was that she believed that you should only break up when you are not in love. I see love differently. I think that it is also true that you can break up with someone you still love. I see an end in all we do and will do. Breaking apart is interesting. Parting breaks our hearts and frees them at the same time.

It is excruciatingly liberating to be alone. I became aware of the intensity of suffering which Sharleen could not occasionally abstain from letting me see a glimpse … she wanted so much more. She wanted a family, a future with no expiring date. I knew I could not let my loved girl have only half the happiness deserved. She was looking for something I could never give her. Finally, I decided that there was only one remedy, the brutal one of a complete parting.

My sudden decision not to see her anymore was utterly incomprehensible to Sharleen. She had, during the last months, one of the best times ever in a relation. What I was doing was a death sentence from a hidden and secret part of me. Fears that lingered for some time were happening now. She was being punished for loving. Nothing had changed, and then there was suddenly this. She knew we shall never be again as we were.

Waiting hurts. Postponing hurts. Not knowing which decision to take can sometimes be the gravest mistake, and in a situation like this, it was not necessary to think twice about what needed to be done. So, Sharleen said: "Tell me. What do you think? Can I get a flight tomorrow?" Frequently, the most important decisions are the most difficult to make, but I gave her a soft smile and told her, "Let us find the first boat living Cres and the fastest connection for you, I will finish what is essential, and you can start something new." I have realized that I expected to stay in control of my feelings and be something I wished maybe in my mind, but a word, a look, and all my defenses came crashing down, leaving me naked only with my natural essence. There was that moment when I realized something cannot be unbroken. I had come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I was going. And part of me learned to love it. Because it is only when you are free from the past that life offers you all. Some events leave scars with the strange power to remind us that our history is natural, but looking back, you do not find what you left behind; past hours are gone, vanquished, and the future lives.

When we said goodbye, we did not speak. I wanted to tell Sharleen: My darling, sometimes love is not enough. It does not matter which way our path takes, you will always be a part of me, and I will remain a part of you.

You were the best that happened, but lately, we were facing different directions, and love consists of the understanding that you want to grow together, going to the same future. I cannot walk with you.

Many things to say but not a sound came out of my mouth; not a sound came from her mouth. No words could say what we felt.

Chapter II

The long sleep.

The following day, I woke up before the alarm clock went off, stuck in that strange state where your dream memory is still mixed with the present. I woke up having forgotten what it was that was hurting or why. All was disorientingly quiet, the window was open, and the air was fresh, filling the room with light filtered through the clouds. For a few seconds, I imagine she was there. My head felt heavy. I pulled myself up and out of my bed, then forced myself through the usual dawn rituals to get ready for a day that did not look to bring much happiness. That morning I wished I had not woken up from a beautiful dream and continued dreaming all day long. Sometimes waking up is full of positive feelings, but this was not the case. It was the contrary; it was more frightening than a nightmare. When you wake up, and your face is dry does not mean you did not cry during the night or in your dreams.

Have you ever heard a silence so deep you wonder if the world went missing? How you can already miss someone when you know that it was your decision, your own selfish choice to stop and never be reunited again, I had no idea. But I did. I wanted to keep my thoughts on something trivial, but nothing makes a house feel emptier than wanting someone to be there. You think that holding someone in your thoughts will bring him or her closer. You believe that you can, with memories, replace some emptiness. I realize I was thinking about the exact same idea, and it was not helping. I needed to concentrate on all the details I had to organize before leaving in the afternoon. Make calls and inform customers of the sudden change of plans.

Looking at the desert beach, I imagined talking to her, and although these words will never find her, I hoped that she knows I was thinking of her that morning. I thought about how our plans for the future made us laugh and feel close. I knew how much Sharleen loved this beautiful city, this house, walking along the long beach, listening to the waves breaking in a gentle thunder. As time went by, those same plans somehow made anything more than temporary between us seem impossible. Now I would fly to Italy, and nobody knows how long time will pass before we hear the sea's sound again.

When we came to this city, I would have agreed with anyone who said that it was very possible to find a more exciting place to settle down than this, but Sharleen always loved Cres. I saw the promise of something secret and lasting in every change in every improvement we did to the house. As more people visited us, I began to feel like a man who has sailed through a vast ocean, never knowing anything but change around him until one soul touched and changed his life. Once in a while, a dream becomes real, and now a house, a city, and the people living here were telling me that miracles were real, and that's how you know you loved someone when you know you can't experience anything without wishing the other person to be there to share it all. Solitude is fine, but like so many other things you enjoy, you feel the need to have someone to tell that isolation is pleasing.

Work! Here was the key to surviving. If you are genuinely interested in what you are doing or are about to do, you will entirely focus on it and escape other thoughts. That was the funny thing about trying to escape. The more you try, the less you really can. Maybe temporarily, but not completely. Yet, there are moments when work is the perfect escape.

Having my small software business is fascinating. It was a world of my own. I was who I was and who I wanted to be. I believe one has to escape oneself to find your true self. I might aspire to change, and I might have dared to dream about understanding myself.

I needed to call Carol. Like many commodities, talent is subject to the same demand in business, and Carol has plenty of that. For me, motivating people that work with me to let them work at their full potential is the central premise of a growing business. Carol's case was exceptional. She never claimed to be more unselfish, more generous, more dedicated, or better than other people. But she has strong beliefs, fundamental moral principles, considering the interests of the company her owns and the team's health and welfare with whom she works to be of vital importance. In a few words, she represents the sure foundation of success.

Well, it seems to me that the best working relationships, the ones that bear the most favorable results, the ones that last for many years, are frequently the ones that are rooted in friendship. I hope to look back at the people I worked with and see something more than a working relationship. Somewhere during the time, the person who was a coworker is… suddenly a friend.

I consider myself not to be blinded by success. Anyone whose goal is to succeed at what doers do faces vertigo one day. Fear of falling? No, it is acknowledging the life changes, something other than fear of losing. It is the danger of becoming something we never wanted to be. We have to recognize when success is asking for part of our soul, we must know how to defend ourselves. I train myself to deal with respect surrounding people, treat them properly. Good leaders are not selfish thinkers. Sounds so elementary and transparent, and yet it often does not happen.

My most significant anxiety was that I had been waiting for the chance to close a big deal with a company securing work that will keep us in business for a long time over the past few weeks. I had learned that waiting is the most challenging part of all, and I cannot get used to the feeling. The agony of waiting comes from knowing all the things that can go wrong. Your life is more and more an eternal waiting. It is not about enjoying life and about living and more about waiting, always waiting for something to happen.

Waiting for a call is mind-crushingly painful. You try to prepare yourself for some news and be ready, but you will never be set for the actual life because real life never happens when you are ready or never happens the way you were thinking. I felt like getting older while waiting for him to phone me. I would feel seconds bursting inside my head; time passed, turning everything to ice. The past floated before my eyes, like the stars and the moon, visible but never reachable. I was numb, too nervous, too close, and not prepared enough for what news could do. Suddenly I realized that if I stood there sitting around only waiting for this person to say something, to tell me, to be the bearer of bad news is a terrible thing. Alternatively, of worrying about what you cannot control, I should shift my energy to devising. Take responsibility for your own happiness; never put it in other people's hands. If one door closes, then some other must be opening. Do not let the presumption and opinions of other people affect your judgments. It is your life; keep doing the best you can, do what matters most to you, and make you feel alive and happy.

I knew I was not incredibly happy that morning. I knew I was using work to escape the changes that were occurring in my life. Life is, from time to time, unavoidably painful. I found comfort knowing that Sharleen was with me, even when she was not by my side. For almost four years, she held an exceptional value in my heart. I keep a special place just for her, even though I am sure I would never see her again. I long at times to reach out and hold her hand and her soft skin close to me, right over my heart like I did, exactly where it aches the most. If I could turn back the time, I do not know if I would do differently because if I had handled it differently, it does not mean I would not have other scars in my heart now. How to know if doing that would heal me or make my heartbreak in a million pieces.

Later in the afternoon, Carol called me. When uttered with just the right tone, the tone is the message. Voices have a language of their own and communicate much more than the words say. She told me, "I knew it," the company's CEO was willing to set an appointment to discuss further steps.

Miracle exits in every moment. I had always vaguely felt some of our experiences to be miracles in the sense that they are lovely. When you escape a severe accident, you do not think about the pain it may have caused, but you reflect on the miracle that helped you get better. After today, I began to believe that each moment knows its own mysteries. We can call them gifts, and that in the stricter sense, they were a manifestation of will.

The truth is that we could say this life is a wonder. Every moment you are alive is a miracle. Think of the sunrise, the sunset, the rain and snow, the moon, the stars, everything, and everyone, around you is a miracle. But we miss these everyday miracles because of overlooking or misunderstanding what is actually there, in our hands. We live in the real world and make our choices based on what is in front of us, the miracle is elsewhere, but often it is right next to us. Sometimes it is us, you, me.

My first thought was to fly the same afternoon to Bologna. It was not that everything was going my way, but I began to believe that the way it was going was perfect. If you stop to think we often become or do what we believe to be, I tried very hard to always keep an open mind. Not to limit me by my own fears and be the master of my own reality. With Sharleen, even if now was over, being open to new ideas that were one of our most vital characteristics, we continuously took the time to understand another. We knew that love is messy, just like most things in life. People or events happen that none of us could have foreseen or even understand, but we were aware of the danger. What I needed is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the moment, not lose this sense of freedom because, in the end, it is all we have.