Sand Castle: Chapter 10

August 2013

I can't remember if we ever had a hot summer like this one, and it appears this hot summer will never end. The days are unbearable, and the nights are too long. I'm wandering around in the house, all night, until dawn. It's impossible to sleep. My parents think I can't sleep because of the heat, but they know nothing about the heat that keeps me up all night.

Finally, rain. I ran out of the house when I heard the first drops falling on the ground. For a moment, I felt free, like a little child running barefoot on the grass among the roses in my garden. Sometimes I regret that my childhood, that beautiful and innocent time of my life, is over. Then life was so simple. Now life is complicated. Love is complicated.

I love it when it rains in the summer. I love feeling the raindrops on my skin, and I love the smell of the dust on the hot concrete. And the summer rain suddenly stopped. Then everything returned to normal, but after I returned from Italy last summer, my life was everything but normal.

My friends and family they don't recognize me anymore. They are worried about why I became so quiet and why I stopped to smile. Everyone who knows me is wondering what is happening to me. Am I using drugs, or am I crazy? I don't know, maybe I am crazy. Maybe I lost my mind on the day when I met Tom. Hello love, goodbye sanity! But if I tell them the truth, will they be able to understand? Some people have never experienced what I had with him that week.

I want things to be as they used to be. I want to be happy again, but I can't. I can't be happy without Tom. Without Tom, my days are blue, my lungs are not getting enough air to breathe normally. Without him, wine has become my best friend. Without him, my life is falling apart, and without him, paradise looks like hell.

Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night, terrified by the thought that this can't be my life, and I want back the life I had before. Nothing hurts more than loving someone with all your existence and not being loved. Is this love what I'm feeling for Tom? No, this can't be called love. This is agony. This love can't be compared to any physical pain. It hurts, like I have a sharp knife stubbed right into my heart.

Does he sometimes think of me as I think of him? Does he sometimes think about the days and nights we had last summer in Italy? From the first moment I open my eyes in the morning till the moment I fall asleep at night, I think about him. Without stopping. Every day.

Where is he? What is he doing? Is he watching a good movie, or is he at a concert? Is he wandering around with his friends? Is he alone in his small apartment, reading a book or writing a new song? Is he at some bar, sitting with an unknown girl he'll later take to his place? If that's true, then I'm jealous of her. She'll be watching his eyes all night, she'll taste his lips, she'll feel the warmth of his body…

These days, I'm jealous of everything. I'm jealous of the raindrops because they're touching his face. I'm jealous of the cigarettes he smokes because they're kissing his lips every day. I'm jealous of the wind because it runs through his hair. I'm jealous of everyone he's spending his time with because nobody needs him as much as I do...

Every time I close my eyes, I feel his strong arms around me, I hear his gentle voice, I can taste his lips… but only in my dreams. When I open my eyes, he is gone. He is thousands of miles away from me, but at the same time, so close, because he is the air I breathe, he is every beat of my heart, and he is everything to me.

From time to time, Tom writes me friendly emails. In the emails, he's telling me about his everyday life in New York. He is telling me about his friends, about the new girl he met, about the struggle to find a record label to release a music album, about his gigs in clubs in front of twenty people, about the book he's reading at the moment, about some good movie he saw, about the new album he bought...

He hasn't written a single word about the sand castle we built together on the beach, the bouquet of sunflowers he gave me, the days when we were inseparable, the passionate kisses, our sleepless nights, and the songs he was playing for me on his guitar. Like it never happened.

Why are we both pretending that we forgot that week in Italy? Why are we just friends now? This summer he will find a new girl, a new love. He will take her to his hotel room, and he'll offer her red wine, he will sing her love songs, and he'll promise her he'll never forget her. Summers are made for meaningless love affairs.

In the beginning, I was also hoping that Tom would be only a brief summer romance, October rains would help me forget him, and autumn leaves would cover every memory of him, but I was wrong. It's been a year, the sunflowers he gave me are dried, the sand castle we built on the beach is swept away by the sea, and the sea erased our footprints in the sand. But he is still in my heart because he wasn't just a summer love for me.

Since last summer, I've been trying to write him a letter to tell him that the distance and time can't change the way I feel about him. I want to tell him about the mess he made in my life, about the fire that is burning in me, and that without him, I'm fading like a young spring flower, exposed in the hot sun. Nobody writes love letters anymore. Today, the word "love" has lost its meaning, and it is now a sin to have a heart like mine, a heart made of glass that can be broken with a single breath. I wonder how my heart can carry all this love inside. I wish I could love him less, to love him with half of my heart, and to keep the other half for me. Loving him this much, with the entire heart, loving him more than I love myself, is insane.