The End of Loneliness

by Benedict Wells

“It was as if he had to return year after year to the scene of his greatest humiliation.”

“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.”

Thiiiissss!

“Are you strong in the egg?” we’d ask each other, and laugh. And if we were talking about someone who’d messed something up, we’d say, “Well, what can you do, he wasn’t strong in the egg.”

I am my mother, watching her children play and grow older, and I hope I’ll get to keep them with me a little longer. And I’m content that I gave up my freedom for this life, even if I do sometimes miss it.

🥹

A difficult childhood is like an invisible enemy, I thought. You never know when it will strike.

“I can still remember being the same age as you with everything before me; how I was able to defy death. And now here I am, sitting in a burning library, and I can’t save a thing.”

“The question is, what wouldn’t be different? What would be the immutable part of you? The bit that would stay the same in every life, no matter what course it took. Are there elements in us that survive everything?”

“To find your true self you need to question everything you encountered at birth. And lose some of it, too, because often it’s only in pain that we discover what really belongs to us . . . It’s in the breaches that we recognize ourselves.”

“And why was I the right person?” I asked. “Because you understand everything.”