28. USED TO THE PAIN

"When Hubert died, I thought about it again, but I did the same thing with him as I did with my father and Jules: at a certain point, you get used to the pain, it doesn't mean you forget them, I have them all in my heart and mind. But I know how and thanks to whom I got here. And those three helped me. Loss makes you put everything into perspective, about F1 and about life in general." - Charles

/Charles/

"Leaving Giada was almost too easy, in a certain sense. Even though I never like leaving. It's not something I do lightly; I know it hurts and I'm sorry.
But if I'm honest with myself, I didn't feel that heavy burden that prevented me from doing it. I felt nothing, I didn't hear anything. I felt sorry because I'm human, but it wasn't enough to stop me from doing it.
So it was easy and it shouldn't have been.
I told her I want to focus exclusively on F1; now that I'm at Ferrari, I care too much about it and I don't want distractions.
It's the most popular and idiotic excuse because it doesn't really make sense, but at the same time no one argues about it. At least not those who get dumped for that reason, because 90% of them aren't in the racing world, so they don't know it doesn't hold up.
Drivers need to distract themselves from racing, obviously not during the weeks of race, but if you're smart you can do it.
Beyond that, if you have nothing else to do outside of competitions, you get drained; you need to unplug, have fun, relax, let off steam, when you're not busy with work. Like everyone else, actually.
So saying you want to focus on work is bullshit, but they accept it because it's not a normal job, so it's plausible.
Anyway, in the end, Giada didn't argue or cry, we didn't even argue because it was in the air; she noticed and didn't fall out of the clouds. She definitely understood that I'd been thinking about it for a while.
One day, I'll definitely look for another girl to be with, because having someone by my side is necessary, beyond the need to start a family that everyone wants sooner or later.
I'm young and right now it doesn't cross my mind, but I think one day I'll want to. But that's not the only reason why I know I'll be with a girl again. It's because she covers you, right?
You're more at peace doing what you want if you have someone by your side. We, who are famous and always in the public eye, have to think about these things. That's what Pierre always told me; he's always had this obsession and I think I share his thoughts.
But for now I needed some fresh air, I couldn't stay with her. I'm in a confusing phase of my life. I feel so many strange things about so many people and I know I have tendencies, but they're not that easy to understand and I only know what I don't like. I needed... I don't know, to make room in my life to understand how I feel about who I am and above all, what I want.
I'm confused. Damn confused.
Because the way I feel about Max is strange: sometimes I'm attracted to him, other times I hate him. I don't know what I feel, he makes me lose my mind and control at certain moments, but I'm not sure what it is.
Then there's Pierre, I also feel something special for him that goes beyond friendship, since when I'm high I act like a maniac with him. I don't know if it's just because my hormones never let out the way I apparently like and he's one of those people I feel comfortable doing certain things with, or whether there's something else.
I don't know, there's too much to think about.
I needed space, so I cut the only person I didn't mind cutting. Once I have a clear head, everything will be better.
As I think about it on the way home for the restart of the championship, after the summer break in August, I listen to one of my usual depressive playlists. I seem sad for Giada, but actually I feel relieved about her. It's simply my general state of mind for years now.
But I wasn't always like this. No, I wasn't.
I started listening sad songs after Jules' death and from then on I couldn't stop; it was as if they reflected my soul.
I think that the day I feel like listening to something more lively and cheerful, I'll understand that I've escaped from that hole I've put myself in for the pain no one should have to experience. The pain you get used to after a while and don't even realize it.
I realize it now, but I would have gladly done without it.

The whole weekend was strange, as if something different was in the air, but we all thought it was because of the break. It's always strange to reunite after a while. There were also some changes: Pierre was demoted to Toro Rosso and Alex was promoted to Red Bull in his place.
A ridiculous swap, so it took me a while to calm down and console Pierre. I felt sorry for him, but at this point, if that environment is so toxic, it's best for him to step away.
So maybe that's it: I'm focused on him and on being there for him and making sure he handles this change well.
We talked a lot about Red Bull and how anyone they put next to Max will always be sacrificed and mistreated, because they're now bet everything exclusively on him and others can be talented and achieve the results they want, but the spotlight will now be entirely on Max.
Pierre isn't mad at him, but he's aware that they tolerate things from him that they don't tolerate from their current teammate, with whom they're instead extremely strict, and that's not fair in any case. Max took a long time before became decent, he made shocking mistakes and even now he's not the clean driver who guarantees you top-level races without bullshit. He still does because he has an extreme and risky driving style that no one else can do.
It's difficult to do well there and to tolerate a situation like that.
We talked a lot about it, as well as about Max and Daniel.
I told him about my clash with him in the hotel at Silverstone, when his eyes were red and swollen from crying, but I didn't tell him anything about the club. I don't know why; nothing happened that I should be ashamed of or hide. Also because I've never hidden anything from Pierre, so I don't know, but I haven't told him this and I don't think I ever will. Maybe because it's our private thing. Like Singapore. It was nothing, but it was something that needs to stay between us.
A hug, a moment of weakness disguised as an alcoholic breakdown.
But I prefer to make him believe I still hate him. In fact, I prefer to force myself to hate him.
I said acidly that it's still difficult to deal with him and that Daniel has been a saint for managing it so far, but that I don't blame him.
Pierre said he's seen a more human and, in a certain sense, fragile side of Max. He couldn't find out much, but he had the impression that because of his father, he's armored himself behind a shield of bullshit to protect himself from him, but he claims that there's actually another Max behind that shield and Daniel must have found him.
I jokingly asked if he wanted to find out too and try, in that case he should come forward since he was free now. But Pierre blushed saying that even though he'd reconsidered him, he isn’t his type. He didn't tell me which one he was and I didn't ask, afraid to know it.
I still don't know if I want this between us and until I know, I won't do anything, or at least I'll try to avoid it.

I vaguely cross paths with Max not before the usual Friday evening briefing, but since we arrived at different times, we stood completely apart and it was as if we weren't there together. We didn't see each other, I deliberately never turned around and then before leaving I waited a bit, pretending I had a lot to discuss with some other colleague.
I'm avoiding him as if something had happened and for that I feel quite idiotic, but if I ran into him now, I don't know if I'd be able to hide the fact that I remember that night in Monte Carlo very well. I think he remembers it well, too.

Saturday, August 31, 2019.
I'm happy, infinitely happy with my pole. Spa is a circuit I like, I knew I could do well, I felt today despite the strange week I've been having, between Pierre's bad mood at actually returning to Toro Rosso and all my clever attempts to avoid Max.
I have Seb next to me, I don't know what he'll do and let's not discuss it. He'll definitely want to try to win and it won't be easy given that the car is going strong for both of us, but I know I can do it. I have a lot of confidence in myself and I'm excited, even though I'm trying to keep my feet firmly on the ground. It's not my first pole and I've never managed to translate it into a win, yet. To be someone who aims for world championships and wins, I haven't done much. The time has come, though.
The drivers' press has just finished and we're answering the journalists' final questions outside in the media area, when something happens.
I'm focused on what I'm saying and don't immediately understand what it's about, but then everyone starts exclaiming in shock and concern and I turn to see what happened. In these places, there's a screen in every corner showing something about the track and as soon as I spot one, my eyes are completely focused on the scenes being played.
The first thing I realize is that it's an accident. A bad one.
A first car crashes, a second one hits the wall and finds itself thrown sideways in the middle, but it's immediately sheared off by the other car that comes in from behind.
Wreckage. Wreckage everywhere.
The world stops, I don't know who it is, I don't remember that the F2 guys are racing now in their Saturday Sprint. I don't really remember any of the details.
My mind is catapulted back to that October 5, 2014, when the very few images of Jules disappearing under the crane at the edge of the track, launched at breakneck speed, played on televisions around the world.
This time it's different, this time I can see clearly. There's wreckage and a car literally torn in two. But wasn't the driver's body supposed to be there?
My God, who is he?
I completely lose the consistency of my body, I'm no longer standing, I'm not touching my mouth with my hand, my eyes aren't wide open staring at the screen and my ears don't hear voices from all sides, full of alarm.
I don't have a voice coming out; my voice is stuck in the back of my throat and will remain that way for many years, but I still don't know. Then, one day, everything will suddenly unlock and I won't be able to hold it back anymore.
Who is he? Who the hell is he?
It's bad, it's one of those accidents that will go down in history for the wrong reasons.
Jules is stuck in my brain, paralyzing me. I can't immediately come to my senses. I don't know how long I stay like this, but at a certain point, names are mentioned and one in particular stands out.
It's like a punch in the stomach that takes my breath away and for a moment everything goes black.
Anthoine Hubert is the boy in the smashed car. The car hitter by the other car and torn to pieces like cardboard.
They look like pieces of cardboard like puzzles. Once upon a time, they made up a car and in that car was a boy.
A boy I know very well.
A friend of mine.
Do I know him or did I know him?
We ran together. He was Pierre's roommate. He's a great friend of his.
My God, how will he get out of this?
How?
What stupid questions, Charles.
You know how he'll get out of this. You've been there before, you know how these things go.
For a moment I retrace nine months of agonizing gestation, at the end of which a child wasn't born, but a friend died. Someone I cared deeply about.
Those months condense into a single moment and I feel like my brain is about to explode.
I come to my senses because the tears are burning, so I shake my head, blink and force myself.
Pierre, I have to find Pierre.
I don't even know if I should say goodbye to the journalists I was talking to. I immediately enter my garage from behind and am already on the phone trying to call Pierre. I sense the presence of someone around me, people I know; I know who they are and I know why they're here with me. Everyone is talking, some are silent, unable to say anything, many are obsessively asking what happened and how those involved in the massive accident on the track are doing. Voices that reach me from afar even though I'm not isolated, locked in a fireproof room.
I only sense that their race is being suspended and then canceled, but finally Pierre answers me and my heart that was beating like mad, stops just to know about him, how is he?
Suddenly, that's all that matters. Nothing else exists, only Pierre and his condition.
Because I know exactly how it's going to go, a part of me feels it. That car was too shattered, where the driver's body should have been, there was the vague memory of a car cut in two.
Jules came to warm me with that terrible flashback.
How is it possible that you forget so many things, but the shocking ones, the most terrible ones, you remember them perfectly?
Not everything and not completely, but there are detailed memories of specific moments.
Like the shade in my father's eyes when he saw me arrive at the box after my competition, when he had to tell me about Jules.
Details that after years you should forget, I don't even remember what I wore on Tuesday to travel and come here to Belgium.
- Where are you?
I know you can't be here yet. If you don't have the post-qualifying press conference, hurry up, answer a couple of questions to the journalists in the paddock, you have the meeting with your team for the next race, but in reality you'll be leaving quite early.
I hear a car noise in the background, although it's not easy to make out because even though I'm inside the garage, it's still chaos.
He sniffles several times before speaking and before I hear his thin, broken voice, I know he's crying.
- I’m on my way to the hospital where they're taking him.
I'd ask him, 'Do you think it's worth it? There's going to be a huge mess!' but that would be stupid. He's emotional, he never thinks through what he does; he just does it and I admire that.
I nod even though I know he can't see me and I sigh as I look at the clock, but that doesn't matter.
- I know it's stupid and he definitely prefers having his family nearby, but I've known him since he was little; we lived together for a while...
Pierre talks and I let him do it while I leave, still talking on the phone and head straight for the motorhome to change, as if there were no one around trying to intercept me and talk to me. I ignore everyone and focus only on Pierre's voice and it's as if I somehow escaped the tunnel I was about to slip into for a moment.
To focus on him, I won't feel bad. I'll remain firmly grounded in myself.  

Our fingers are intertwined, our hands clasped, we sitting close together in the hospital among other people, many driers or members of his team, his family who still remembered Pierre.
But no one notices our hands like those of two engaged couples, because they’re all lost in another dimension, that of waiting.
The worst waiting in the world. No one speaks, it's as if it couldn't be done, but Jules hovers between us. I seem to see him here sitting next to us, comforting and telling us to be strong.
When the news no one wants to hear arrives, I say absolutely nothing. I slip my hand to put it around his shoulders, pull him to me and hug him before he can truly understand what the doctors have just told Anthoine's family.
He's dead.
At least he won't have nine months of agony for himself and for all the others who would have waited for him.
Absurdly, I think that if he had to die anyway, it would have been better the way it happened to him. Right away. Without unnecessary, prolonged suffering for everyone. If something has to be, it has to be now.
I use all my strength to hold Pierre, who dissolves into desperate sobs, while I feel the cries of the others around penetrating me and taking me back to the last time I received news like this in another hospital.
My father, two years ago.
Again. Here I am again suffering such a profound loss. A friend has gone, another.
A death every two years.
As Pierre floods my neck with tears and I hold him, I wonder what my face looks like. I squeeze my eyes to see if I'm crying, but I'm dry.
Do you get used to the pain?
Maybe yes.
After a while, you get used to it, yes.
After a while, you already know what it’s like and how it’ll go.
At first it will hurt, then slowly you'll be able to live with it and it will become a sad thought in the corner of your heart, but you'll go on with your life, knowing that life is fragile.
Damn fragile. And that people die in the most disparate ways.
Two on the track, running a race.
And I'm supposed to keep running like this, as if nothing had happened?
How many will ask this question? And me? How will I respond?
What an idiot I am, I know exactly how I'll respond.
Yes, I will. I'll run as always, because that's who I am. I'm a driver. It's all I know to do and in any case, even with the shadow of death racing beside me, I know perfectly well that if I stopped doing it, I would never be able to feel the way I do when I get in the car.
Free.
Incredibly free.
There's nothing that shuts down my brain like this. When I lower my visor, the world is erased, there's no past, present, or future. There's only the race. The speed. The erasure of everything.
You're speed and adrenaline and all the pain fades away, you're alone with the wind.
I can't stop, I can't give up.
But maybe I can do this because I know myself, I've done it before. I've been there before and done exactly the same thing and I know I'll do it again this time and every time it happens.
I'll always be able to get in the car, no matter what happens to me.
But maybe I can do this because my heart died with Jules and when you're dead inside, you feel nothing.
Maybe that's it, after all.
I hold Pierre close and kiss his forehead as I whisper to him to leave, because staying here now will only hurt him more. For now, all that matters is helping him. Now there's only Pierre. Just as he was there for me with my father and Jules, I'll be there for him with Anthoine.

- How do you do it? How do you manage it? - he asks me once in his room after I've laid him down. His shocked eyes are still full of tears and pain, which he expresses without reserve. The sobs have subsided, but now there's that silent crying that won't stop.
Uncomfortable. I feel like this after he looked at me like that. I shiver and place the towel I've soaked in cold water over his face, focusing on his forehead, eyes and cheekbones.
As soon as I do, he gasps and tries to remove it, but I take his hands and hold them between mine, placing them on his chest. Once there we tighten our fingers, but we don't let go.
Pierre sighs and finally relaxes his entire body and I lie down with him, slipping an arm under his neck. I pull him against me and he lets me.
- Sorry. - he says after a while.
His uncovered mouth is incredibly close to mine and I gently caress the lower part of his face.
- For what?
- I didn't mean to imply you're insensitive before. It's just that I was lost, I've been having a blackout since the hospital and you've always known what to do and I was shocked. But I didn't mean to imply anything.
I smile slightly at his anxiety in specifying something that hadn't even occurred to me. Even though maybe it's true. Not that he thinks so, but that I am.
- You're not entirely wrong, I say.
There's something, tonight. The desire to be honest, to take off every mask and stop fighting.
There's such a tiredness.
This is what yet another loss is leaving me with.
Pierre, understanding the rest I haven't said, removes the cloth from his face and, with small, red eyes that are shocking, looks at me from this exaggerated proximity, but I, too torn by his gaze, put the towel back over him. But he remains facing me just a few centimeters separating us, we remain wrapped around each other, held tightly together.
- You're not insensitive. You've just had a lot of losses. Too many.
I sigh. I don't know if I'm capable of rationalizing it. Tomorrow maybe I'll succeed and end up having a great race escaping this little monster inside me, but right now I can't do it and I just wish I had a way out so I wouldn't feel this way.
It's not normal to survive yet another loss in your life.
A friend of mine died, I've known him since my go-kart days.
So I look at his lips at kissable range and wait.
I kissed him when I was sick that time in the hospital for my father. I was so out of my mind that I kissed him. If he wanted, he could do it; I wouldn't deny him.
- No one should have a loss every two years. - he repeats. - You're not insensitive, you're strong, he continues.
- Right now I feel empty and I wish I wasn’t. - I whisper sincerely. Pierre no longer makes any move to remove the cloth, he remains beside me in this position, abandoned in my arms like a blind man following a voice to navigate the dark.
- And I wish I didn't feel all this pain. I'm cold.
But he's not shivering and I know how cold he’s. I understand him very well and I know what it is. I also know what to do, what he needs.
His lips are trembling, even if you can't see I'm sure he's crying again. He's breathing softly.
- It hurts. - he whispers. His voice breaks and so I lean toward him and seal his lips with mine.
I know exactly what he needs right now.
I know it perfectly well.
Only one thing can help you and I certainly can't help but give it to you, with everything you've done for me with my father.
It's right, after all. And maybe while I try to stop his pain, I'll take a little for me deluding myself that I'm more human, too. Perhaps.”

NOTES: It's not an easy chapter to write because no one can know or imagine what they've been through, so I want to clarify that it's all of my imagination and I hope no one is bothered by my version. We're at another very important part for Charles and their relationship, another domino effect that will lead to many other things. Sorry for the publication length, but I'm on vacation and literally losing track of time. Until next time. Kisses, Akane