I'm Thinking of Ending Things

by Iain Reid

‘The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me. Or, conversely, I myself am a question which is addressed to the world, and I must communicate my answer, for otherwise I am dependent upon the world’s answer.’ ”

“A memory is its own thing each time it’s recalled. It’s not absolute. Stories based on actual events often share more with fiction than fact. Both fictions and memories are recalled and retold. They’re both forms of stories. Stories are the way we learn. Stories are how we understand each other. But reality happens only once.”

The idea that we are better off with one person for the rest of our lives is not an innate truth of existence. It’s a belief we want to be true. Forfeiting solitude, independence, is a much greater sacrifice than most of us realize. Sharing a habitat, a life, is for sure harder than being alone. In fact, coupled living seems virtually impossible, doesn’t it? To find another person to spend all your life with? To age with and change with? To see every day, to respond to their moods and needs?

Getting to know someone is like putting a never-ending puzzle together. We fit the smallest pieces first and we get to know ourselves better in the process.

“Depression is a serious illness. It’s physically painful, debilitating. And you can’t just decide to get over it in the same way you can’t just decide to get over cancer. Sadness is a normal human condition, no different from happiness. You wouldn’t think of happiness as an illness. Sadness and happiness need each other. To exist, each relies on the other, is what I mean.”

How are we supposed to achieve a feeling of significance and purpose without feeling a link to something bigger than our own lives? The more I think about it, the more it seems happiness and fulfillment rely on the presence of others, even just one other.

Maybe that’s how we know when a relationship is real. When someone else previously unconnected to us knows us in a way we never thought or believed possible.

Most people want to get married. Is there anything else that people do in such huge numbers, with such a terrible success rate?

We can’t and don’t know what others are thinking. We can’t and don’t know what motivations people have for doing the things they do. Ever. Not entirely. This was my terrifying, youthful epiphany. We just never really know anyone. I don’t. Neither do you.