Forever Alone

He was staring at the ceiling, his wife was sleeping to his right, hugging a pillow and facing away from him, he was uncovered with his hands behind his head. He stood up and stared at the bare trees through the window of his small wooden Canadian house and at the snow reflecting the moonlight. His house was far from everything else, no one knew how to reach it or that it even existed, and that is what he loved most about it: just him, his wife, and the migrating birds. He was happily forgotten there.

He was thinking about how, the closest person to him, his wife, the woman whom he memorized the curves of her face, the way she smiles when he dances to his favorite jazz song, the woman who watches him sleep in admiration, the only one with whom he shares stories about his ignorant father, his frustration at his idiot boss, the way he fetishizes glasses, and his feelings about his mother...he was thinking how that woman that knew exactly how much salt he likes on his food and his shoe size, his morning routine, and the way he knocks the door, doesn't know him. Despite his satisfied marriage, he thought that he has been -and might always be- forever alone.

He went down to the kitchen where he lit one faint orange light, made coffee, and sat at the small round wooden table in silence until his coffee got cold. He thought that not only will his wife not understand him, but he will not understand her to the level he is thinking of either. It was the first time he thought about it from her perspective.

"We are too complex...I do not and cannot understand myself. I am shaped by experiences and history from which I sadly forget more than I remember. As Ralph Emerson said 'I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.' Me too! I don't remember my own history and how it shaped me -the specifics of how my first-grade teacher treated me or the way my parents reacted when I drew a picture for the 500th time- let alone expect another person to know and understand." He wrote in blue ink on a paper that he folded and used to mark his progress in a book.

"I don't know my priorities, I doubt my career choices, regret past decisions, and have a hard time scheduling my day because of my confusion. Perhaps my wife can never understand me fully because I don't understand myself."

"And if even my wife, the closest person cannot understand me, then -probably- no one ever will." He thought but didn't write down.

He did not expect to be understood without speaking, for he learned a long time ago that this is impossible, his misery was deeper: he will not be understood even if he spoke.

Even when he tried, he struggled to express how a certain perfume discomforted and reminded him of a certain past, while it excited his wife because an accurate and precise explanation would require a recall of all his life events since birth and their interplay.

He thought of how a movie, a song, or a novel might resonate with him, shake something within him, strike him like a bolt to the heart, or leave him crying. In these moments, he felt like his emotions, thoughts, ideas, and desires were expressed by another that understood him better than he understood himself.

He thought of a novel he read one winter in which his love battles felt like they were narrated to him by a mystical stranger, a movie that expressed his opinions about war and death more accurately than he could ever do, and a song that captured his last 10 years of Sunday blues in 3 minutes.

"I might end up forever alone, but it is not that bad. I met a few people that understood me from time to time, they were mostly dead authors and poets, but a great company nonetheless. At least, if I know that no one will understand I will not seek to find this one (in my wife or in anyone)."

He turned off the light, went back up to the bedroom, and quickly fell sound asleep.