OUR UNTOLD STORIES – The Lost Lionel

25 May 2016

Image created by the author

We’d like to warn you that you may find this contribution to Our Untold Stories upsetting…

This is the story of a close friend, which doesn’t seem like a romantic story, but I still fell in love with him.

I was an art student in my last years of college when I met Mark at a local AS group in the Spring of March 2011. I was new there. He resembled the Hollywood Nerd stereotype often seen in 80’s/90’s films in the clothes that he wore such as his thick rimmed rectangle glasses and woolen sweaters. I sat at his table, and soon enough, we got on and we discovered that we had things in common, like Cartoon Network shows and psychology and he also talked about a show he was very much into called Good Luck Charlie, a sitcom that aired on the Disney Channel. Up until then, we only ever saw each other at the local group.

Several months after we met, I proposed about us meeting up somewhere outside of the group. He was shocked at first, but agreed on the notion that he’d meet my mother afterwards just so that she knew that he wasn’t just a random stranger that I found from the streets. From that day on, we met at our local Costas every other Saturday, often at the same time 2pm. Sometimes we would go to Reading, often to a buffet restaurant named Cosmos. Other times, if there was a film we both wanted to see (such as Wreck It Ralph and Inside Out), we would meet up in Boswells, in Newbury, and then head to Vue, accompanied with a trip to Nandos afterwards. As for paying, since he had a job, he was often the one to pay for the drinks and food, but as the years went by, we agreed to go dutch (we split the bill). Often when we were arranging to meet up, he would initiate it.

Speaking of a job, Mark was working in a mortgage office in Newbury filing papers but he hated that job. He wanted to go to college, but felt because of his Aspergers, he couldn’t go; also he was only in the job for the money and it was what other people wanted. As a result, he was becoming increasingly stressed with the changes that went on with his job. I was the one who said that he should follow and think about what he wanted to do, and not that other people wanted. In the summer of 2012, he resigned from his job and attended college studying Accounting, which was his dream job. He also landed a new job doing bookkeeping for a company in Theale.

While I was at university, 3 years later, and I chatted to the girls in my animation course on toon crushes, I fell in love with him. Among his traditional values, he was a gentleman, in the way that he often escorted me to the train station whenever we were parting. If there were eras to pick if we were in an alternate timeline: it would be either the Victorian Era (I gave him the nickname Mr Darcy) or World War II, because he resembled the men often associated with those timelines. He showed me that there are intelligent life forms on this planet, something I saw less of in secondary school, apart from a few exceptions. I also loved that fact that he was willing to make an effort to socialise, and to try things with me, even though it was out of his comfort zone. We were like high school/childhood sweethearts in the way we were around each other, or at least a potential Disney couple. We were also as weird as each other and we each had our dark secrets, that only we knew about each other.

We were like two animation styles that existed in the same world, like in The Amazing World of Gumball and Drawn Together. I was the wild, expressive, theatrical Tex Avery/Disney type while he was the rotoscoped, down to earth, realistic Mike Judge/Marc Brown type. We were also two like two sides of the human brain: logic and emotion. There are loads of analogies that I could come up with to describe us: He was the water to my fire, the Japan to my America, the cat to my dog, to name a few, but the most important analogy was the art and technology. In short, we were polar opposites: I was the fiery, creative, outspoken, imaginative, theatrical, social, emotional, artistic, chaotic and passionate. He was quiet, logical, traditional, down to earth, realistic, shy, practical, organised, neat and tidy.

I dreamt of us dating, getting married, having children (and that’s saying something since I am not a fan of kids by any stretch! (2 boys and one adopted Asian girl)) and growing old together (similar to Victor and Margaret from One Foot in the Grave and Leon and June from Gogglebox). The reality though, was that a relationship wouldn’t have worked between us. Mark hated being touched, for one. Second, he was one who had difficulty dealing with other people’s emotions and told me that if I was upset, he wouldn’t know how to comfort me, so because of this difficulty, if a relationship was to happen between us, I would end up angrier at him, especially when I knew it wasn’t his fault. So essentially, he was like Edward Scissorhands.

That being said, I wrote several love notes and drew several artworks declaring my love for him, but I never delivered them mostly because it would have made him uncomfortable. I confessed my love to him on two Christmases, but on both occasions, he said that he loved me, but he wasn’t interested in a relationship for the following reasons previously stated, mostly because he didn’t want to potentially hurt me. He was honest and upfront, another quality I loved about him. It broke my heart, sure, but I eventually accepted that he just saw me as a friend, as much as I wanted to date him. We remained close friends, and we still saw each other, but even though we weren’t dating, it felt like I was married to him.

I tried dating other people, including a guy I met through a local autism group in Southampton, who some of my friends set me up with, but it lasted a month before he cheated on me and stalked me the next night. I even tried dating websites, and applying for The Undatables, before they turned me down on the second round, all just to move on from him romantically. And no matter how many guys I met who happened to be handsome and with similar/same interests to me, and were intimate, I always felt guilty that I was deceiving him and I couldn’t quite move on. We were like TV’s most faithful couple Homer and Marge in retrospect, because no matter how any times the couple met people who were essentially dream versions of their better halves, they always went back to each other by the end of the episode.

The last time I ever saw him was when we went to see The Good Dinosaur. The week after, when I was sitting opposite my mum ordering coffee pods online, a phonecall from his mum came and mum answered it. As soon as mum got off the phone, I asked: “What is it?”. Mum was silent for a moment and I thought, “What have I done now?” She then told me the news: the man I fell in love with and only friend committed suicide by hanging himself. That was when my heart shattered to pieces. I cried wildly that afternoon and wanted nothing more than to escape the house, to escape the madness that I was feeling at the time. I was so devastated, that everything felt meaningless and I even wanted to commit suicide myself, just so I could be with him, like in Romeo and Juliet, but of course, that’s not the answer. He didn’t leave a suicide note, so no-one knew why he did it, but I have an idea. On top of his high IQ, he had many issues with his self-esteem. He was ever anxious, and if there was one thing he hated, it was himself. He hated having Aspergers, and he wanted nothing more than a cure for it. Unlike me, who quite frankly couldn’t give a monkeys, Mark was the opposite. He was highly self-conscious, often resulting in him often overcompensating just so he could try and keep up with the Joneses, something that is incredibly difficult for people with autism. I heard that he often said to his mother that he wished he was more like me.

I saw Mark’s body at the funeral directors, in order for closure and I was finally able to give him something that previously would have been impossible for me to do: A Valentines card. I also touched him, and kissed him, which was also something previously out of the question. I read a eulogy for him at his funeral, in which everyone who attended there loved. It was harder to say goodbye to him when I left. I am currently seeing councillors now and am currently getting better. It feels like now that water has gone, fire ignites everything. Now that order has abolished, chaos reigns. Facts disappeared, and now fantasy has nothing to stand on.

A month since my Mr Darcy has gone, and I am still pining for my love till this day. All that I have left of him is the doll he gave me, which resides in my handbag. I don’t know if I’ll ever love again.

For support with bereavement, you may like to visit crusewestberks.org or call 01635 523 573