“Do you live with father?” the stranger asked me in the middle of the street.

“Father and mother,” I said, grinning.

Since you left me Teddy, I’ve been trying to be kinder and more open. I speak to strangers. I am training to become a care worker. It’s not a lie, I really am. I want to care for little children but I need to be able to care for anyone, at any time.

“Where do you live?” the stranger said, and I gestured to the house which held the room in which I lived alone. I could barely see the house’s outline through the darkness but I hoped the house was right, the one I’d pointed at. Cos I’ve been trying not to lie, Teddy. I’ve been trying to be honest and avoid all of the lies I used to tell. I used to lie to everybody Teddy. I’d tell everyone that you were my lover, and you loved me still. You couldn’t be with me but you loved me very much, and you missed me. You wanted me to think about you always, to remember you, and to immortalize you within my autofiction. That’s the lie that I told everyone, last summer and last winter.

The man took his bag off his back. The bag seemed heavy but he lifted it with ease. In my care worker training I was taught how to lift objects. I was taught the best posture to use when lifting objects. It was best to keep your legs and your back straight. Don’t bend. Don’t bend at all. It wasn’t natural to me. My favorite objects had always been small ones, you know that Teddy, and the small ones were so easy to lift. Me and you both had mental problems which made us fixate on very specific small objects in childhood. What was your favorite childhood object, Teddy? I don’t remember anymore. Or no that’s wrong, I never knew. I didn’t forget, I still remember everything about you.

Lifting objects: it isn’t easy. Lifting objects, lifting people: I was taught how to do both. Fold the corners to the center. Hold the corners there, immobilized. The corners could be human limbs. I practiced lifting on a life-size floppy doll during my training. I lay the arms and legs, folded in two, against the heart. But I made a mistake. I didn’t ask before I touched. “You need to ask,” the trainer said. “Can I touch arm? Can I touch leg?” And then an older man named Jeremy said, “Yes,” as if he was the doll, to show us what reaction we were looking for. Now we would know the good reaction when we saw it.

I acted weird during these training sessions, Teddy. I acted weird cos I was shy and felt uncomfortable. I acted weird because I have problems and I acted weird in front of you in social settings too, when you introduced me to your family and friends. I’ve cured my problems now. I’ve cured them through a healthy diet. Just kidding, I’ve cured them through repressing their behavioral expressions. I am different now Teddy, you would barely recognize me. I’m a manager. I manage a small team of employees. Again, I am not joking, this is true. Every morning I arrive at work and say, “Good morning, how is everyone progressing through their tasks?” or something similar. Then I give the employees new tasks to carry out.

The stranger’s bag was on the pavement now. It stood between us on the pavement. It was a black bag. It looked normal. I did a smile which was meant to communicate, “Bye,” or “Good night,” or “I’m leaving now, I wish you well.” I turned to walk away.

“Hold my hand,” the stranger said. I turned around. The street looked beautiful, with white light coming out of somewhere and lighting up all of the trees. For a moment I felt moved and overwhelmed by an emotion which had nothing to do with fear. But the street was empty, I could see that, there was no one else around. It was just me and the man: two strangers, alone, with no relationship, no shared social script. “Anything can happen,” I thought. The phrase made me feel alert. I felt the air against my skin although there was no wind. I couldn’t tell if the feeling was good.

“Hold my hand,” the stranger said a second time.

“Why?” I said. I sounded like a child. Oh, I still feel like a child, Teddy, just a tiny child. Some nights I cry because I feel so sorry for myself. A tiny child all alone, I lie in bed and I hear footsteps all around me, I hear birds flinging their bodies on the glass and I feel scared. I am not functioning well, Teddy. I need assistance. I need whatever it is that people get when they need help. Who can help me all the time, by being kind to me and trying to understand me, and by loving me? It feels like only you can help me, Teddy. No one else can.

“Hold my hand.” The man’s requests made no sense; I would not be able to describe them in the future. I would not be able to put them into a narrative. “A man told me to hold his hand”—it makes no sense, nobody cares. I need more interesting and meaningful experiences to put into my autofiction. I need experiences which are legible, and which affect me in ways that are serious but possible to recover from.

“What do you want?” I asked the man. My voice was shaking and I realized I felt scared. I felt a fear which wasn’t social—more innate, like an animal’s fear. The man was bigger than me and could dominate me easily. I thought of how, sometimes in sex, I would lie down on my front and the stranger I was with would lie on top of me. My face would be against the pillow so that I only saw darkness, and the stranger’s heavy body would encompass mine, and press down into me. For unknown reasons this position made my ears pop. So it felt like all my senses were removed, and I lacked input. Like I’d died. Sometimes it calmed me: nothing visible or audible. Sometimes the deathly feeling calmed me, after you left me, Teddy.

“Just hold it.” I made a typo now: “just hold me.” Just hold me, Teddy. Please just hold me. But that’s wrong, the man said “hold it,” about his own hand.

“I don’t know you,” I said. “So I don’t want to.” It seemed like a strange thing to say, but also like the only thing to say. It was a truthful thing to say. And I’ve been trying not to lie. If God was true then He would look down on me now, and He would see I had been truthful and had tried to tell the man about my feelings. And oh Teddy, I wanted you to know me in the way that God would know me. You’d see through me to the core: a hard white ball of light. And I would see the light of truth inside you too. Teddy, I wanted truth so badly. I can still picture you inside your bedroom, writing in your diary which was a giant Microsoft Word document. I can still picture the screen, as I imagined it: full of illegible text, seen from a distance. I pictured your diary as if it was in Wingdings, or an ancient code, just shapes and symbols that I couldn’t parse. “What do you write about?” I asked you more than once. “Boring things,” you said. “Worries about health or careers. But sometimes other things, not boring. Sometimes feelings about you.”

Do you remember when you said that, Teddy? That you wrote about me in your diary. You were trying to understand something, to puzzle something out. You were trying to understand what it meant: me plus you. Me plus you meant something good, Teddy. Me without you feels dangerous, like I am an orphan but nobody feels sorry for me, cares about me, or wants to help me. Please tell me – how do you feel? Are you scared as well? Are you happy in this city?

“Kiss me,” the man said.

“I live with Father,” I said, with the tone of an old movie, a 1950s sort of tone. “Jesus Christ,” I was thinking in words. Kiss me. That is something that I never said to you. “I love you,” I told you all the time. “You are the only person I have ever desired,” I said truthfully and often. “I wish you’d marry me,” I said, laughing or tearful. But I never told you what to do. I never asked you to kiss me, Teddy! We sat side by side, I felt your body against mine and I leant into you as tears formed in my eyes. Or when you sent me photos of your body, and I sent you photos back, I never made requests, I just responded. We would look at photos of each other and we’d touch ourselves, alone inside our separate rooms. “You look amazing,” we would type in Facebook Messenger. And we’d both send the same gif: a cartoon lemon jumping around and shouting “Wow.” We sent that lemon all the time. When I sent you the lemon, I meant this: “Wow, thanks for the photo, you are so beautiful, I love you, kiss me, hold my hand, please be the first person to touch me, because your body is perfect and feels entirely pure and clean to me, because of how much I want it, and how kind and good you are, which makes me want to understand exactly how you feel and to know and experience everything which relates to you.”

The man kept standing there and watching me. “Are you trying to rob me?” I said. And I remembered a story you told me once, Teddy. You were walking down a busy street, and a stranger came up to you and pushed you to the ground. A stranger pushed you and you fell. “What do you think he wanted?” you asked me, and I started to cry. Because it scared me, Teddy. The thought of you falling. The thought of someone hurting you so randomly. I cried and you held me. I wanted to know exactly how you felt when you fell down. I wanted to feel the same fear, to understand you, so that you were not alone. We’d be together in the memory of falling to the ground. “Did you think that he’d keep hurting you?” I asked you, so I’d understand. “Were you scared that you would die?” And you said no, you didn’t think that you would die. But you weren’t thinking, you said, because you were confused and in pain. There were no words inside your mind.

I never managed to simulate that wordless pain in my own mind, Teddy. I never knew exactly how you felt, when you fell to the ground.

Teddy, I don’t know what I’m meant to say. I loved you so much and it made life feel new to me. It made me feel excited to speak to people, to have conversations. I wanted to be in the world. I wanted a future with you in it. “Wow,” I thought so often. “This person understands me in a new and special way, therefore I can be understood, and I exist, and have a future.” But do you hate me now, Teddy? Do you feel like I betrayed you? Are you scared of me? Please don’t be scared. I love you and I want you to be well. Oh Teddy, I don’t know what I’m doing, can you help me? If I do things that seem bad to you, it’s because I’m trying to understand something that’s bigger than me, bigger than you. I am trying to understand the world, Teddy.

“Kiss me,” the stranger said. The leaves were green and neon in the white light of the street. I felt like I was being tested or punished by something all-powerful which neither me nor the stranger could understand or influence. The stranger was a conduit for something. “What do you want from me?” I said, in the voice of a child. I wasn’t speaking to the man. I was speaking to you, Teddy, or to God. “What do you want?”

Sometimes I go out walking. I go to the park and watch the children play. I watch them ride on tiny bikes, fall off into the grass. I watch them running, kicking balls, I watch the tiny children stumble as they walk. I smile at them. I love children. I’m crying as I write this. I love children, I want them to feel happy and safe. I feel like a child but I want to be a mother. I want to care for something tiny that loves me. Teddy, we could have had a beautiful daughter. Because of genes she’d be neurotic. Because of genes she would be kind, because me and you are both kind people. That’s why I’m sorry, partly: cos you’re kind, I don’t want to hurt you. Teddy, I really am sorry.

Me and the stranger were looking at each other in the eyes, then. “Teddy, I really am sorry”: I was still thinking the words inside my mind.

“I’m sorry if I did something that bothered you,” I said to the stranger. It was the only thing that I could think to say, which related to the situation, but also to my thoughts and feelings.

“Kiss me,” the man said. “Just hold my hand.” If I were him I would have said: “Just hold my hand, it isn’t hard.” The words sound right together. And they make the point so clearly. None of this is hard. If it’s hard, it is because you are resisting. But I needed to resist. I didn’t want to hold the hand.

I wondered who I’d call once this was over. I wondered if I could write a nice story about it. I wished the man said a more varied range of sentences. “Kiss me. Hold my hand.” It wasn’t enough. Actually I felt very scared, Teddy, and all these thoughts were fake thoughts I invented to distract myself. Because the man seemed to hate me. He was cold and his actions seemed deliberate, like they formed part of a greater and more frightening plan. And we were only at the start of it. I felt sick, so I thought lines like: “I wonder if I can write a nice story about this.” And it comforted me. If things got scarier, the story would get better, and more people would enjoy it, and would understand the way I felt for you, Teddy, the way I feel still.

When I first knew you I was living with my parents during lockdown. I’d walk to a small lake near the house that I grew up in and I’d look out at the water. I would look out at the houses on the lake’s most distant edge. The lights inside the rooms all on. I would look out at the houses and the water in the darkness, and I’d listen to pop music about love. I was falling in love with you, Teddy, I knew that and I knew what it meant. The lake’s surface was dark and the grass was dark, and I’d stumble around on the small patch of grass with tears inside my eyes, feeling amazed.

I saw baby bunnies when I loved you. I saw weak shivering bunnies in the fields. I saw butterflies. I saw the sun as it was setting and I felt my heart inside my chest, beating so hard. I was just a child, Teddy. I was a child having a wonderful experience. The world felt beautiful and proximate. I can remember how the grass felt on my legs. I can remember how the sea felt when we swam in it. I didn’t realize I cared so much about nature. I didn’t realize how close I could feel to external things, until I met you.

The man stood still above the bag. “Kiss me,” he said.

“I don’t know you,” I said, very loudly. I wanted more strangers to hear me and to gather, to encircle me and the man, and to watch us, so that we were held accountable. When we are witnessed we don’t violate the social code, and if we do, there are consequences. That’s something I’m learning in my life.

“I don’t know who you are,” I shouted in a crying voice. “I feel scared.” I felt the trees all rustle. Up above me they were still so green, too green, green with the cold light that was coming from some object on the street. But no, the trees looked good. They looked healthy and fresh. They were healthy things, in a strange visual context.

“I’m going away now,” I said crying.

“Touch me,” said the man. “I have a gun.”

One time you cooked me a big amazing dinner because I had been crying about my personality and mental problems. “You’re really great,” you said. “You don’t have to worry about things like that.” One time I wrote you a sweet and happy story because you had to have an operation. “You’re so brave,” I said. “I wish you never had to feel pain.”

“What do you want from me?” I said through tears. The man said nothing. No one ever gave me the information that I needed. Everyone expected me to guess. But I can’t guess. I don’t know anything. I’m moving blindly through dark and frightening landscapes all the time.

“Why do you hate me?” I said.

“Kiss me,” said the stranger.

I cry every day. I feel lonely and my life feels fake, like a computer game, or no, more like a dream. I just do things, speak words, eat food and sleep. I tell my employees which tasks to do, I pick the tasks at random. Everyone criticizes my choices, and I feel upset but also do not care. Without you it is hard to feel involved in my life. I don’t feel depressed anymore, Teddy, I don’t want to die. I just feel confused. I feel lost and so alone. I have grown up, I’m different now. But I still feel the same. I still feel scared. And I still love you.

“Remember: I have a gun,” the man said as he looked me in the eyes. He wasn’t blinking. Did not blinking mean lying or speaking the truth? Was it possible to understand what would happen in the future, just from looking at the man’s wide-open eyes? I wasn’t sure. I looked at his eyes and then I turned around and ran until I reached the house that held my room. It was only three houses away. It took five seconds. I unlocked the door and the man stayed on the street. He stood and watched me without blinking. I was inside the corridor. I turned the corner to the stairs. I started climbing, then I stopped. I was already safe. If someone shot the door the bullet wouldn’t hit me. It wouldn’t even touch me. Then I started to cry and I cried for a long time. I am still crying as I write this. I didn’t die, Teddy. I wasn’t hurt at all. I am so sorry for the stress that I have caused you with my life. I am sorry for the pain. I wish that everything was easy. I wish that you had loved me back. You didn’t love me, it’s okay. I still loved knowing you. I’m sitting at my kitchen table with the door locked and the window open, remembering you, and crying lots. The sky is blue. I’m drinking coffee. In a weird way, Teddy, I am feeling very happy. I can hear a child shouting. I hear birdsong. I feel raw and close to something that’s important. It is only Sunday morning. It’s a good time to relax and to remember special moments from the past. It is the right time to be doing that.