The End of Loneliness

by Benedict Wells

“The most important thing is that you find your true friend, Jules.” He realized that I didn’t understand, and gave me a penetrating look. “Your true friend is someone who’s always there, who walks beside you all your life. You have to find them; it’s more important than anything, even love. Because love doesn’t always last.”

It was only years later that I realized this was the only time she spoke to me as an equal.

for a long time—an unusually long time—she looked into my eyes, and I’ll never forget how in doing so we were able to glimpse each other’s inner worlds. For one brief moment I saw the pain that hid behind her worlds and gestures, and in exchange she sensed what I held deep inside. But we went no further. We both stopped on the threshold of the other, and we asked each other no questions.

“You are not cool,” she told me. “That’s just how it is, I’m afraid. And you’ll never be able to change it, either, so don’t even try. But what you can do is at least look the part.”

for a moment it was like before, except that two people were missing. It was like before, except that nothing was like before any longer.

all I heard from my sister was years and years of static.

Through the lens of the Mamiya things came to life: tree bark suddenly acquired faces, the structure of water made sense. People too seemed suddenly different; sometimes I only understood their expressions when I saw them through the viewfinder.

photography <3

I sensed the despair behind her words and didn’t know what to do: I could only be here, right beside her.

I didn’t want to be just a boy anymore, I wanted to shake off all traces of youthfulness, I would have thrashed them out of myself if I could.

Yet it always feels as if Liz is merely fulfilling the instructions of an invisible cameraman. Another dazzling smile, perfect, now a little pout, a quick, flirty look . . . When she turns her gaze on you it’s as if she’s shining a spotlight on your very self, and the only thing you want to do anymore is to please her.

“We were all hurting back then,” she said, “and we all reacted differently. I made sure nothing was ever calm again, that my mind never had a chance to be still. I threw myself into life the way I did because whenever I sat alone in my room and thought about things, all I wanted to do was cry my eyes out.”

Books and records and films are being thrown away and digitized into a world you can never physically enter. The children of the future will just sit around in empty white rooms.”

Your childhood, our parents’ death, are not your fault. What is your fault is what these things are doing to you. You alone are responsible for yourself and your life. And if you just do what you’ve always done, you’ll just get what you’ve always got.”

“Maybe you’re not writing on paper, but you’re doing it in your head,” she said, in her quiet voice, and touched my arm. “You always have. You’re a rememberer and a preserver, you just can’t help it.”

being an artist is insane

in all these moments I could virtually see our past delicately reconnecting with our present and future.

this imagery got me I don’t know why

the reason I was always reading was simply to escape, to let myself be comforted by a few sentences or a story.

YES YES YES

“I can’t let go yet. But I will manage to in time.”

this is painful and so real and true

Romanov had once said he had never dramatized life, never added anything. It was just that he had never looked away.

Still an overwhelming feeling to hold one of the babies in my arms. As if the brightest part of me shone not in me anymore, but in them.

to be a parent

Toni’s great, and—honestly—I can even imagine that he’s the man I’ll grow old with. But just as a friend. He’s someone you can love, but not someone I could fall in love with. I want someone who pushes me away sometimes, someone who treats me badly, whom I can fight for.”

why has the world conditioned so many women to think and operate this away

There was a familiarity between us that seemed infinite, like two mirrors reflecting one another.

asking for this type of love

“I’m going to survive this, Jules. I know it.” She seemed surprisingly calm. “I’m going to survive it.” I looked her in the eyes and believed every word.

THIS IS GUT WRENCHING

“Perhaps once in your life you should hold on to something until the end, instead of always moving on.” “I knew you’d say that.” She let go of me. “But there’s no point in living like that. Everything’s over so quickly and you can’t hold on to anything. All you can do is be.”

Alva reached for my hand. A familiar, lovely feeling, holding her hand in mine; they fitted together perfectly. I’d noticed it even back then, all those years ago, in the red Fiat outside the village pub.

once again, asking for this type of love. the perfect fit love.

Back then, when Alva came to sit beside me in school, we could never have suspected any of this. She was just a country girl beside a city boy who had recently been orphaned. The beginning of a story. Our story.

the beginning of a story

I want to be wherever you are, and that is—reality.

“You can speak openly, don’t worry,” she would say. “I have no secrets from him.”

From death

“Better eight years with you than fifty without.”

One last great explosion of thoughts and feelings, tangled fear and trust, and already it was flying away with her, astonishingly fast and strange and immeasurably far away.

they need someone who will guide them through everything on this new and difficult track, and that someone is going to be me. And I realize that perhaps I am the right person for this after all, because I’ve been through it before.

I carry Vincent back to bed, tuck him in, feel a deep connection with him. I see myself in this boy so clearly it hurts.

there’s a whole realm in my head filled with all these people, some half-forgotten, that I’ve met along the way. I want to preserve them all, prevent them from disappearing; I have the feeling that otherwise they would never have been here at all.

for a long time it seemed to me quite random that, out of thousands of variations, this was the one that came about.

Even more than my siblings, I wondered to what extent the events of my childhood and adolescence had defined me, and it was only very late that I understood that I myself am the sole architect of my existence.

all I have to do is think of the moments with Alva and my children in order to understand that this other life, the one in which I have now left such clear traces, cannot be wrong anymore. Because it’s mine.

From the moment we’re born we’re on the Titanic.” My brother shakes his head; he’s uncomfortable giving speeches like this. “What I’m trying to say is: we’re going down, we won’t survive this, it’s already been decided. Nothing can change that. But we can choose whether we’re going to run around screaming in panic, or whether we’re like the musicians who play on, bravely and with dignity, although the ship is sinking. The way . . .” He looks down. “The way Alva did.”

The past is noticeably fading, but the future is still a long way off. I can think only of the moment,

I often think about how my brother and sister and I lost sight of each other after childhood. How we were compelled, early on, to face up to the finite nature of life, and reacted in completely different ways.

The only way we can overcome the loneliness within us is together.

The most special part of siblings

this moment is a seed. I will plant this scene in my son, and hopefully in a few years it will germinate, and he will lose a little piece of his fear forever.