The day I met Holden Caulfield: A Letter to a Lost Boy

This is a letter to a guy I shall call Holden Caulfield. This letter reflects his actual life, but in a vague and hopefully respectful way. Holden Caulfield, for those of you who are illiterate, is the main character of The Catcher in the Rye. It is a good book. You should read it. There are lots of swear words so be prepared.

Letter to a Lost Boy:

I am so happy that I met you. I instantly liked you, and wanted to understand you, to figure out the life that produced the complexity that sat before me. I learned that sex is your king and pleasure is your God. You strive for happiness, but currently you live in a self-made prison.  You once strove for greatness, but now mediocrity seems a more realistic goal.  You are seeking to find the elusive happiness you used to know.  Because you were happy once—young, wild, and free… running through the woods, living every little boy’s dreams.

Play was your king and dreams were your God. Like a rich Tom Sawyer, you were the envy of every kid.  But as dreams do, when the morning comes, it left only vague shadows and eerie feelings of a childhood too far gone to catch. You tried to go back to sleep and reenter the dream, but the innocence of childhood can never be reentered after it has seen the corruption of the “real world”.  They were supposed to protect you, but instead their fighting became your normal, his beatings the price you had to bear. You became a self-appointed protector of innocence, a modern Holden Caulfield, trying to keep “him” from ever waking up and facing reality.  You took pride in protecting his dreams, sheltering his childhood, the way they were supposed to shelter yours.

In the midst of fighting to protect his innocence, you found your own love, a 16-year-old sweet beauty that shared everything with you. She wanted to keep you forever. And for a while, everything was good. It wasn’t Tom Sawyer in the woods, but it was a sanctuary in the chaos, a security in the storm.  But even the goodness you found couldn’t stop the cruelty of an unfair world.  You couldn’t protect him from the darkness.  Why couldn’t you have saved him?!? In the depth of despair, you realized there was no longer any choice but to face the darkness head on. Maybe you no longer wanted to be afraid of the boogie man, or maybe it was the only way an 18-year-old boy knew how to deal with death: to choose to experience life’s worst, with eyes wide open, as opposed to waiting for it to sneak up on you when you weren’t looking.

In absolute control, you chose to hit bottom, just to see what was there.  Ever a protector of innocence, you couldn’t take her with you, so you entered this new world alone.  Denying yourself no pleasure and keeping no company, knowledge became your king and experiences your god. You went from party to party, high to high, girl to girl, seeking happiness no matter how fleeting you knew it to be. You found pride above the other slum-dwellers, knowing that you had chosen to be there fully aware of the potential consequences.   And it was there that you happily stayed.

Maybe you would have stayed forever, maybe you were waiting, holding out, just to see if they were ever going to come and rescue you.  They never did. You didn’t care, because you were having fun. The thing is, you could barely remember the fun anymore. You would wake up to stories of all the fun you supposedly had, but with no memories of your own. The drugs kept your body awake, fighting back the nightmares, but also blocking the sweet dreams. You eyes gave glimpses of a carefree boy, but your face reflected the age of a hard life. When the image before you finally became more than you bargained for, you forced yourself to leave the security of the pit, and climb back up.

Despite the “I don’t need anyone” attitude you reflected, the first thing you did after you pulled yourself out of the pit, was tell them where you had been.  Covered in dirt and grime with the experiences of life lived too hard, you confessed everything. You told them of your lost innocence, and gave them a chance to say… anything, something, to cry, to be angry, to show disappointment. Despite a life that constantly proved otherwise, you confessed your sins, and prayed they would, this time, just once, treat you like the wayward child you were, that they would be the parents and you would be the child.

But dreams are more often shattered and fairy tales only exist in the movies. You had survived the pit only to reenter your reality, a reality that you now accept that you will never escape. You are a parent to your parents, your innocence lost, your childhood long gone. You have found contentment in the rubble, and have settled for the life of least resistance. You entered yourself into “rehab”, and took up your place as their caretaker. When he died, you grieved, not only for the loss, but also for the father that was never going to be, the dream that never came true. You take care of her, because despite it all, you love her.  You no longer protect innocence, because you know it will never last. Sex has become your god and pleasure your king. Despite walls too thick to ever tear down and experiences that guard you against it, in your eyes I still see a smart, innocent, daring little boy who wants to conquer the world.