Catch Up Darling

Hello darling. It’s been a while.

Where have you been? Hiding?

I haven’t been hiding. I’ve been running from quiet. From the moments where nothing distracts you from yourself. Movement felt safer than stillness. Freedom felt easier than honesty. I told myself I was wandering, exploring, indulging a little. That was true. It just wasn’t the whole truth.

Africa wasn’t an accident. I framed it as curiosity, but I was also chasing permission. Permission to want without explanation. To take without promising anything back. One day I’ll tell you the stories properly, without polishing them into adventures. They still cling to me like red dust.

I started in South Africa, in a place called Wilderness. They insisted on calling it a village. I arrived without a plan because I didn’t want one. Plans imply direction. Direction implies responsibility. All I knew was that I would begin in the south and move north toward Morocco, a destination distant enough to postpone commitment. So far, the only constants were Wilderness itself and seeing François.

Wilderness was more than a place. It lingered. It offered itself quietly, persistently. I thought I had grown past temptation, that I could recognize it and walk away untouched. I was wrong. I had only learned how to justify staying. When demons arrive wearing the faces of lovers, when they listen carefully and speak softly, refusal becomes complicated.

I was alone longer than I admitted. Loneliness doesn’t announce itself loudly. It slips in through attention. Through being listened to. Through eye contact that lasts just long enough to feel intentional. I wanted to be seen without performing. I wanted my silence to be understood. I wanted closeness that didn’t ask questions or make plans.

The intimacy wasn’t reckless. It wasn’t dramatic. It was quiet. Almost careful. It didn’t feel like passion so much as relief, like exhaling after holding my breath longer than I realized. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t even desire in the way people like to name it. It was simply not wanting to feel alone for a while.

François. How did I allow myself to be so naïve?

He wanted the paper. The security. He thought he could make me fall, but he misjudged me. I kept him at arm’s length, always. I knew we could never be anything real, because his intentions were never about us. They were about escape. About leaving Africa behind. I could have been his freedom. His green card.

So I ran. Miles, if not in distance then in resolve. I left him standing there, and for that I owe him an apology. I let him believe I cared more than I did. I let him think his feelings were returned, when the truth is simpler and less flattering: I was lonely, and I missed having a friend.

We don’t speak anymore. And that’s for the best.

I came back to Wilderness. Again and again. I moved in cycles, arriving and leaving while I volunteered, always waiting to find my people. I never did. No one wanted to know me fully. They wanted a taste, or something to use. I felt like another item in a collection, briefly admired, never chosen.

On the rare occasions when conversation went deeper, when I allowed myself to be seen, it unsettled them. They wondered how someone like me could reach so far beneath the surface, how I could see what I saw. And then they left. I was too complex. Too untidy. They wanted something simpler to hold, something easier to claim.

I am not meant to be claimed.

I left Wilderness carrying moments, not roots. Nothing that stayed. Still, I wonder if I’ll ever make it back there, or if that place belongs only to who I was while passing through.

After Wilderness, I left for the middle of nowhere: Middleburg. It was my next destination and volunteer placement. I didn’t know what to expect, and what I found surprised me completely.

Life there was simple in the best way. Farm days. Open desert. Long stretches of quiet that taught me how to enjoy my own company. Small talk disappeared. In its place were real conversations, the kind that wander into subjects not usually welcomed at dinner tables. Nothing was off-limits. Nothing was rushed.

The family welcomed me without hesitation. Their kindness felt unforced, generous in a way that didn’t ask to be repaid. It was a break from the superficial, and for the first time in a while, I belonged somewhere. I gained two brothers and a sister. We took small road trips. I watched them perform in theatrical productions and felt oddly proud, as if I’d always been meant to sit in those seats and cheer.

I loved my time there. I wish I could have stayed longer. But restlessness found me again. Want and curiosity crept in, and I found myself drawn toward a stranger who had already claimed a quiet piece of me. So I did what I always seem to do. I followed the pull. I rode the wave of curiosity and boarded a bus to meet him.

My favorite word you spoke was sweetheart. The way it rolled off your tongue was richer than molasses, slow and deliberate, like it belonged to me before I ever earned it. You felt unreal, as if you’d stepped out of a dream I hadn’t admitted I was having. You towered over me, quietly claiming my fantasy as your own. You were what I needed before I knew how to name the need.

You cracked my exterior without force. I still remember the day I walked down that hill, the way one look turned into a smile, and the smile into recognition. We were both shy at first, tentative in our words, careful with our hands. When I climbed into your truck, I didn’t calculate the danger. You could have been anyone. A stranger. A threat. Or the reason I stayed. Or maybe simply real.

We drove, leaving Wilderness behind us. The weekend became ours. Trust without commitment. I couldn’t stop looking at you. You were addictive in a way that felt physical. I was parched, and somehow you became the drink I didn’t know I was reaching for. When you pulled the truck over and turned to look at me, your eyes held both truth and curiosity. I couldn’t look away. When you pulled me in and our lips met, whatever walls we’d brought with us collapsed quietly, all at once.

You were gentle with my hard edges, softening me without trying. There was a warmth to you, steady and calm, like a candle’s glow that doesn’t demand attention but changes the room all the same.

That weekend belongs to us, and I carry it carefully in my mind. All I can say now is thank you. Thank you for holding up the mirror I needed. For showing me my own reflection and letting me crumble without trying to fix me. You were a safety net. You held me without asking for more.

Thank you, my dear elf.

As I left him behind, it was time to be solo again. I followed the pull north to Jeffreys Bay. The bus let me off as the sun hung low, bleeding orange across the horizon. I slung my pack on my shoulders and started walking. Shadows stretched across the road, long and crooked, swallowing the edges of everything I knew. I quickened my pace, heart picking up, aware that darkness was moving faster than I was.

Then I saw it: a cop car sliding up behind me, its presence sudden, impossible to ignore. I haven’t done anything wrong, I told myself. But it stopped anyway. The officers asked where I was going, warning it wasn’t safe to walk after dark. I climbed in, and at first, relief flickered. Nothing felt wrong. Nothing yet.

Then I glanced at my phone. The red line on my GPS didn’t match the winding road outside. My chest tightened. Stay calm. Don’t panic. But each turn, each unfamiliar street, made my stomach clench harder. We weren’t heading to my hostel. We were looping through the town, and the night outside pressed against the windows like it wanted in.

I hated that my instincts had failed. My caution, my sense of danger—they seemed useless. And still, I couldn’t stop watching the red line crawl forward, knowing every shadow could hold the unknown. My throat tightened, my fingers dug into the seat. Something about this ride didn’t feel right. But I had no choice but to keep moving, trapped between trust and fear, and the night that seemed to lean closer with every mile.