Charl and I met in December 2017, while I was on holiday in Sedgefield with my family. At the time, Charl was in a relationship (and I was legally off limits). Although our romance only blossomed years later, we still gravitated towards each other and spent nearly every day of that holiday together.

As December ended, I remember feeling a deep sadness knowing that I may never see this stranger-become-friend again. While we exchanged numbers and conversed over Whatsapp, life gets busy, and you find you don’t have much time to dedicate to long-distance friendships.

Years passed with no communication, until I heard through mutual friends in 2019 that Charl had relocated to Pretoria (Actually, Cullinan). Pretoria being much closer than Sedgefield, I wanted to reach out and connect again. We talked a lot over the phone, having near-constant communication until we met again in person twice in January and February 2020.

My parents (For some reason?) allowed Charl to stay over for the ‘three’ weeks of lockdown in March 2020. As we know, three weeks turned into three months, with no end in sight. What ensued after was a back-and-forth of Charl and I bouncing between the two different houses, never spending more than a week apart, until we finally moved in together in 2023.

Every event, every moment, and every person came into extraordinary alignment to bring us together. As if our meeting was orchestrated by the universe…

• Aunty Mars and Uncle Wayne (my parents’ closest friends) bought a house in Sedgefield, and set in motion the December holiday that would unknowingly change my life

• I had to be a rebellious teenager sneaking out of the house to go for a ‘walk’ (cigarette)

• Charl, on impulse, chose to ride through the rain at that very same moment, and reached out to a stranger he had just passed to ask them if they wanted to meet him later that night

• I couldn’t ignore the thought that someone inviting a stranger they’d just passed in the rain to meet again later must be reaching out from a place of loneliness. I felt I had no choice but to go and see if they were alright

• We instantly clicked and wanted to hang again the next day (and the next, and the next …)

• Two years later, Charl had made such a strong impression that when his name resurfaced through friends, I felt I had to try and reach out and reconnect.

• With his heart of gold, Lourens drove Charl countless times from Cullinan to Joburg, allowing us the time and space we needed to reconnect

• My parents, trusting their instincts, didn’t feel like Charl was a creepy serial killer and after meeting him only once, welcomed him into our home as family

• In April 2020 the government extended our ‘Holiday from Life’ and gave us the gift of uninterrupted time together, and from that moment on, we have never left each other’s side

“Only through the rare alignment of events, perfect timing, and the right people, like planets and stars in flawless orbit, could our paths have crossed”