A day of freedom, a lifetime of oppression.

Chapter 3 - Goodbye Sharon

I lay on a bench in a park, looking up into Candy's eyes. She had loved the virtual gifts I had given her. We had been dying to meet in person.

In the spur of the moment, after having a particularly bad day, I had travelled all the way west in a Greyhound to meet her in the middle of the night. She had risen from her slumber to meet me, without complaint.

As Candy gazed back down into my eyes, I could not help but squint from not one, not two, but three suns that hovered above me. We had spent so long in the park, dawn had come.

As those eyes enveloped me with a warmth I only now knew existed, I could not help but notice how very safe I felt in the lap behind my head.

It terrified me.

I could see it terrified her too.

She would not be able to leave the lights on if she let herself love me. Who would proudly announce to the world, on the social media they loved so much, that they were going to share a life with an autistic person?

That is probably why she was initially wary, and then eventually stone cold the day after.

Perhaps I should not have mentioned that I would be happy to live with her, in her new home, that she was going to move to.

Her new home was located much, much closer to mine. Oh, what a fairy tale it would have been if she had chosen that location because she wanted to be close to me!

Ah, live in your own world of fantasy and dreams, Andrew.

That was more or less what Candy had said, when she claimed that her most recent writings had nothing to do with me. Events, personality of characters and secret messages in her writing had made it clear for me to see that she had been writing about us.

She seemed to understand the hidden meanings in my writing, too. We had a connection that seemed almost magic. It was hard to imagine a life without it. To be able to communicate that purely with someone... was to be naked to that person.

Whether or not you wanted the other to know what you were thinking and feeling, they were bound to find out if they read the writing you expressed yourself in.

She might as well have said that she loved me and could not feel alive without me, to my face.

"You're not just an asshole. You're a hypocrite. And most of all, you're a fucking coward, just as you have implied in your writing. You're a fucking coward for not daring to admit that you're in love with a person like me." The words must have hit home, for she blocked me on WhatsApp quickly after that message had been sent to her phone.

With a sinking heart, I proceeded to block every possible avenue of us ever getting back into contact with each other.

Uplive, obviously.

WhatsApp. For good measure, I deleted my chat logs with both her phones. Many, many nights of late night chats. An astounding amount of messages. I had once tried to scroll to the top of our chat logs, and after a couple hours of scrolling, my phone had eventually hung.

That silly girl really did need two phones. She was always running out of battery on one of them.

Then, I removed her contact information from my phone. I did not remember what her number was. And when I had tried to check my call logs the day after blocking her, there were too many numbers for me to even guess which was hers. Her number was lost to me forever.

Facebook. We had written so many posts there, just for the sake of saying something to each other. Facebook Stories also allowed us to check in on how the other's life was going, from time to time.

Instagram. Another avenue for communication with one another. Sharon's Instagram. That was Candy's real name. Candy had just been her screen name. And the Sharon I knew was worlds apart from what I'd seen on screen.

On Instagram, Sharon and I had delivered beautiful messages to one another in poems and prose, complemented by beautiful, sublime images. Reading Sharon's posts was almost like listening to her in a conversation.

Wattpad. I was writing a book for her. I had also written poems and songs about us.

Medium. Sometimes, Sharon had chosen to write about us there. Some posts were replicated from her Wattpad poems about us, but some were unique. She liked to maximize her exposure.

It was not possible to block her from viewing my Spotify account, though. For some reason, it was there I chose to bleed.

In Spotify, I created my final goodbye to Sharon. A playlist with just one song, titled 'Leave the Lights On'.

What would they say, what would they do?
Would it be trouble if they knew?
I'm trying hard to make you see
All that you are is all that I need

I know that it's a secret
And that I gotta keep it
But I want the lights on
Yeah, I want the lights on
And I don't want to run away anymore
Leave the lights on, leave the lights on

Those lyrics had filled my room for days.

"This song is pretty apt. You wouldn't have been able to leave the lights on with me. Those ripples in the serene waters must really scare you. To be honest, they really scare me too. But hey, at least I had the bravery to admit how I felt and put myself out there, even if only for a day this time." Not your typical playlist description.

Serene waters. Sharon had created an Instagram post about how it was impossible for someone to climb aboard a small boat without causing ripples to a glassy surface of water. The waters in the photo she had used were really peaceful.

Looking at the picture, I had wondered what invisible currents lay beneath.

I did not know if I hoped that Sharon would see my goodbye message on Spotify. I did not want to imagine what might happen if she did.

It was my way of telling her I understood what she was going through.

She should have just ignored me from the start. It would have hurt much less than her gazing lovingly, deep into my eyes, only to never do it again.

"Why'd you have to look me in the eyes that way on the bench?" I had demanded from her in frustration, shortly before the end.

"What way?" She had asked incredulously.

Lying and denial seemed like second nature to her. Were broadcasters not professional actors, after all?

All I had asked from her was honesty about her feelings. Apparently, that had been too much to ask for.

As I sat at my computer, typing my book, tears welled up in my eyes.

"Goodbye, Sharon." I said out loud. No one heard me, of course.

I was alone.

Like I had always been.