I Fell in Love with Hope: A Novel

e said I’d make a good doctor.

In retrospect, I know he said that to make me happy the same way I told him while he was confined to a wheelchair that he’d make an excellent horseback rider. We made fun of each other like that, although even on the phone, he could never do it with a straight face and he could never not follow it with an ‘I’m joking’. It’s rare to find people so inherently nice who’ve suffered that kind of pain. Pain is a nasty animal of the body’s own creation, just like an autoimmune disease. It tends to destroy, but whatever it destroyed in him, it was not his kindness.

When he died, it blindsighted me.

At first, it felt somewhat unreal and then it graduated into a physical pain I couldn’t stand. I remember laying on the floor, wanting to scream every time I thought of his smile.

My kindness, what fickle pieces of it were left standing, was pulled out by the roots. For years after, I plunged into a streak of cynicism and meanness and the general belief that life was a sort of sick joke and not worth the ablutions of compassion.

I kept him a secret from everyone, save my mother. Somehow, that made it feel like I was preserving him. I tended to lie to people who asked about my past because that’s what children do when they’re hogging something. He was my first true experience with the kind of death, and he was my first experience with love, and I wanted him to remain something of mine. With my adolescence, that compulsion faded, as grief tends to. My aggressiveness and pessimism were replaced by a general coldness which I find is just an inherent part of me that I must accept. I retain my ability to laugh, my ability to empathize, and more importantly, I learned how to be kind.

Our real story–the thousands of emails we shared, the phone calls, the moments of laughter, and the stories we wrote one another–do remain mine. He and I inspired this story, but ours will always belong to the past, and to my memory of it as it should.

To the boy who smiled and encouraged me to write, not for the world, but for myself, you will forever be a part of me. This story and the characters I described to you over the sound of a heart monitor and distant workings of the hospital all those years ago have finally found life. My heart beats with thunder and lightning, and even if it is weak, it is the one I gave you. It and this story are forever yours as much as they are mine.

To the reader who trudged through these sometimes tedious, sometimes heavy pages, my gratitude is not empty. Whatever you take with you, even if it is a single line, just know I appreciate the gift you’ve given me.

In the end, mean or kind, the world is full of people who are all similar. We are bone and blood, and some consciousness tied to it. So, don’t give your enemies the satisfaction of watching life go by, and whether it be a passion, a place, a person, or just a lonely friend bound to ink and paper, love as hard and as long as you can.

Thank you.