Afraid of the Dark

"A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

My father was a musician, self-taught on the acoustic guitar he bought secondhand when he was fifteen years old. He had never wanted anything more than to be a musician. He had never wanted to be a husband or a father or any of the other things he got roped into being somewhere along the way.

I didn't know him for very long, but in the time I did know him, he was a sad man. His smiles were thin veils over the disappointment that lingered in the way he carried himself, his laughter shallow efforts to conceal the vacancy in his eyes. He held my small hand in his large rough one (calloused by familiarity with those six strings) when we crossed the street, but he gripped my fingers between his delicately--not like he was being gentle or easy, but like he was on the verge of letting go and making his escape, slipping through my fingers like regretful smoke.

He did escape, one night.

I think he felt bad about it. It was hard to tell, because I was so young, and because of the natural optimism with which I have always regarded the world. It was hard to tell what his true intentions were, because the circumstances made me judge him kindly. I liked to think he felt bad about it.

It was very dark and still and the air in my room seemed thick and slow with the musky smell of summer in the south. The door creaked open and he stood there in the square of light, the dim glow of the porchlight outside casting his long monstrous shadow against the wooden floor. He shut the door behind him and walked over to me where I lay in bed, so quietly that I couldn't hear his footsteps--just the rustle of his clothes as he moved.

I felt the mattress sink down as he sat on the edge of my bed, felt his hot and somehow clammy hand cup my face. "Sarah?" he murmured. His gruff voice did not squish the two syllables into one like it usually did; rather, the tenderness in it stretched my name out like his elongated shadow on the floor. "Baby, you awake?"

"Mmm," I mumbled sleepily, scrubbing one eye with my fist.

He leaned down and kissed my forehead.

Even at that age and even at that time of night, I sensed that something was wrong, that his behavior was not normal. But I wasn't sure how it was wrong, or what I could do about it anyway, so I just stared complacently back at my father as my life changed forever.

It was too dark to see his face. I couldn't see his expression, couldn't see the look in his eyes when he kissed me and touched my face. It bothered me more later on, when I better understood the significance of that night, because I couldn't know what he was feeling without having seen his face. I didn't know if he was mad or sad or glad or even very sorry. I didn't know why he did it. I didn't know how or whose fault it was.

It was dark, and I couldn't see, couldn't understand anything.

The bedframe squeaked mournfully as he got to his feet and turned towards the door, preparing to walk out of my life forever. He made it halfway to the door and then stopped and turned around so that he was facing me, one hand reached out towards me, as if calling me to him somehow. Then he whispered, "Sarah," and let his arm fall limply to his side again as he turned and continued out the door.

He said my name like an apology.

-----

The first time I ever met Pete Wentz, he apologized to me. I guess he was a lot like my dad in a lot of ways--or at least in the way that they both left me in the end, left me in the dark and hurting because of things I never knew before, things I couldn't see. They were both musicians and they were both bound and promised and meant for something else fantastic and beautiful before I came along and riddled holes in their fine plans. I loved them both intensely, and I ruined them both for it.

The difference was that I never realized the way I felt about my dad. I never realized how much I agonized over the loss of him, how much of my life I had spent overcompensating after he was gone.

The difference was that I knew in one particular moment, as Pete and I stood together in Times Square with a million commercial ads and a million stars and a million flashing lights and a million happy feelings lighting up our faces--I knew in that moment that I would be hurting for the rest of my life because of him. And I knew that he would hurt too, and I knew that it wasn't fair. He was never mine to hurt.

So in the end, I was the one apologizing.

It wasn't enough, really--the simplistic "I'm sorry," scribbled across the bottom of that stupid Polaroid that I never should have kept, in shaky cursive that didn't belong to the person I had thought I was. The person I would never be again.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to go back to her anyway. She had been so pure, so innocent, so full of life and joy and exuberance and confidence and belief. There was a darkness lurking deep inside of me that had not been there before, and it gnawed away at my peace of mind day by day.

But somehow I still couldn't regret it. I couldn't regret him. I couldn't regret New York, the dark cold hotel room, cloudy with all the heavy things weighing down the air, suffocating and liberating and, yes, overcompensating (still, yes, again, like always) all at once. It hurt so badly, but I could never regret it. I could never ever regret it.

And it was so bizarre, how much had changed in such a short space of time. I had always thought I was a good person--cheerful and kind and fun-loving and sweet. And wasn't that what Pete had said had drawn him to me in the first place? My goodness? The goodness he was bound to ruin?

But I ruined him. Neither of us expected it, but it happened, and then I couldn't make it right again.

So I said I was sorry. It wasn't enough for me, but it was enough for Pete, because he knew how it was--he had known all along. He had always known the truth.

And if it weren't for him, I never would have.

-----

I believe that everything happens for a reason. There is a certain symmetry to life that is far too perfect and too unavoidable to be accident or coincidence. I'm not a particularly religious person and sometimes at night when I'm lying alone and I can't sleep, it seems impossible to me that God is real--but somehow I can't accept the alternative explanation either, the cold and cynical idea that the magic of our existence is the product of mere chance. If I ever truly believed that there was nothing more to life than us--than the shallow mediocrity into which we are born, we pass through, and then die in--I don't think I would have any further motivation to live.

To really live.

Because most days my hope is all that keeps me going--the hope that there is something else out there, something bigger and infinitely more beautiful than the grit and the grime of the world we have built for ourselves.

And it's just too hard to accept the alternative. If I believed that life happened by accident, then I would have to believe that my father abandoned me and my mother and my sister for no greater reason than because he loved music more than he loved us; I would have to believe that I am just another crazy writer with a failed career in journalism, and that I will die having been nothing more than that; I would have to believe that I'm alone now because I'm a cold-hearted fool with high standards, and not because I just couldn't have the One who was made for me.

I can't believe that.

What I do believe sounds crazy to most people: that we are all put here for a reason, that our every move is planned and mapped out for the best, that everyone has a perfect match intended for them and them alone wandering around on the planet somewhere. For that reason, I never shared these beliefs out loud with anyone except one person--my soulmate.

He didn't think it sounded crazy.

He's always on my mind now. I think about him all the time--partly out of loneliness, and partly to keep my grip on reality, on who I am and who I could have been. Every night before I go to sleep, I close my eyes and remember his smile, his laugh, his twisted, beautiful view of the world. It's all that keeps me sane, the knowledge that someone else out there sees the same things I see, feels the same things I feel, thinks of me as much as I think of them. Because I know he thinks of me, too.

I have to believe that much.

Even if it's not true.

-----

But the biggest reason why I think about Pete so much is that I am afraid to forget him. I am afraid to forget the way we were together and the meaning of it all; I am afraid that I might wake up one day and find it was all just a dream, and there never was any meaning to my life after all.

So I remember--every day, every night, every second of my existence, he's always there in the back of my mind. Even when it hurts so much I think it just might kill me, I force myself to remember so that I can never forget.

I can start at the beginning and play through the seven short days in my mind like a movie; I remember every second I had with him. The memory is long and bittersweet, and it begins in a dimly-lit conference room in Los Angeles, California, where my boss gives me my new assignment. I am to fly out to New York City and spend eight days documenting the lives of the four members of America's hottest band, Fall Out Boy, and come back with a searing full-length article on the nation's most glorious sell-out: Pete Wentz.

I am vaguely irritated (Fall Out Boy? Really? I can't interview some real musicians for my first full-length piece?) but mostly indifferent, smug in a resigned way. Pete Wentz, at least, is famous in the industry for his loose lips; it won't be hard to get some juicy tidbits out of him, and the rest of the article will come easily with it. It won't take much work to pin him as a sell-out in the piece. He'll probably do the job himself with his obnoxious douchebag quotes.

I am sure this assignment will be easy. I am sure Pete Wentz will be simple to interview. I am sure that I can write a kick-ass article on Fall Out Boy and why our readers are right to be disgusted by them, and I am sure I can count on a promotion due to fantastic reader feedback on the piece.

What I'm not counting on is falling in love with my subject in seven short days.