Wellness

by Nathan Hill

It is an odd feeling, to sense one’s aliveness, for perhaps the very first time, to understand that life up until this point was not being lived, exactly; it was being endured.

Jack thought about that winter, how for months they were separated by the distance of an alley. All they wanted back then was to eliminate the space between them. And now here they were, twenty years later, putting it back.

“Beyond all the poetry, beyond all the songs, love is this, my dear: it’s an expansion of the self. It’s when the boundaries of the self spread out to include someone else, and what used to be them now becomes you.”

How could the boy think she was perfect, when her own inner experience of motherhood was of constant catastrophe, endless defeat, never living up to her own parenting ideals, not even for a single day. What the fuck am I doing wrong? was basically her everyday mantra, and yet, somehow, Toby thought she was perfect. And Jack too thought she was perfect. And so the big question was: Why was she the only one who disagreed?

certainty was just a story the mind created to defend itself against the pain of living. Which meant, almost by definition, that certainty was a way to avoid living. You could choose to be certain, or you could choose to be alive. And the only thing she was certain of was this: that between ourselves and the world are a million stories, and if we don’t know which among them are true, we might as well try out those that are most humane, most generous, most beautiful, most loving.