Just Talk to Me
Sometimes all a person needs is for someone to hear them.
He had eyes like my brother.
I knew many of the other students, clumped together in the middle of the room, from parties on the weekend, but I slid in a seat next to him.
“Hi,” I said, as I sat my backpack on the floor between our desks.
So began our friendship.
Our writing class met three times a week so I sat next to him three times a week. He didn’t know anyone else at the school because he had moved to our little private Catholic school in Kentucky from the east coast. He always sat in the back of the room, as far away from the loud obnoxious students as he could possibly get.
At first, he didn’t say much. I did most of the talking.
I was a shy kid back then and rarely if ever, approached someone and started talking. I let people come up to me. Usually, my friends were the kids who were the opposite of me- — outgoing, extroverted, gregarious. I needed those people to talk for me until I felt comfortable enough to come out of my shell.
I never began the friendship.
But with this boy, this boy with eyes like creamy caramels, something was different.
He needed a friend.
I had never met anyone who seemed so alone when I looked at him. His eyes told me everything. I could feel his loneliness.
As the semester progressed, we became real friends. After class, we would walk to the cafeteria and share lunch. Sometimes, I would walk back to the dorms with him and hang out until I had to leave to go to work. We studied together when we had tests. English was always my best class, so I helped him with his papers.
I looked forward to the days when I would see him.
And then, during the last week of the semester, as the excitement mounted for Christmas break, the halls alive with shouting collegiates, scents of apple cider and hot chocolate drifting up to the classrooms from the cafe on the first floor, he informed me that he was not coming back after the break.
“What?” I asked, looking into those eyes that had first drawn me to him.
“Why?”
He was moving back home, but he wanted to keep in touch. We exchanged addresses and promised we would write to each other.
That day was the last time I saw him. School shut down for the break, and when I returned in January, he was gone.
We wrote to one another for a year or so. Email and cell phones did not yet exist so our writing was done via letters.
We wrote long, all-embracing, sweeping letters, telling each other about every detail in our lives. His life was again lonely, and I tried to reach him through my writing, disregarding the miles and miles between us.
And then his letters stopped. I continued to send my letters, waiting each month for a response, but it was if he had disappeared.
My letters began coming back to me, stamped return to sender. I didn’t know why or where he had gone, but I decided that it was time to stop trying.
I hoped he was okay.
I dreamt about him for a while. Always his wide, unblinking eyes, smiling at me. In my dreams, the loneliness was gone from them and a pure joy shone through them. But only in my dreams.
I got married and bought a house with my husband. One day, I went home to see my parents. Sitting at the kitchen table with them, having a cup of tea and homemade cookies from my grandmother, my mother jumped up and went into the dining room. The dining room table was always covered with bills and receipts — it was Mom’s file cabinet.
She came back into the kitchen and handed me an envelope.
“I forgot to tell you about this. It came for you last week,” she said, handing me an envelope with only my name and address on it. No return address.
I ripped it open.
It was a letter from him. Short, only a few lines of text.
He thanked me for my friendship. Told me it had gotten him through many difficult days and saved him when he felt like he had no one. He said he just wanted me to know how much our friendship had meant to him and helped him when life felt hopeless.
That was it. Just a few sentences and his signature.
Twenty-five years later, I still have that letter. I was never able to answer it because he left his address off of it. I didn’t even know what state he was in at the time. I know it was intentional. He wanted to thank me without me feeling like I needed to reply or to keep me from asking any questions.
To this day, I have no idea what happened to him. I think about him and hope that he made it through, that he found some happiness, someone to share his life with and that his eyes are now eyes of joy.
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