“See, it’s not that I’m jealous of others. I just don’t understand why they can be happy and I can’t.”
He pays the bill in euros, we cross the border on foot and walk toward our cars, which are parked on the other side of the street—i.e., Switzerland.
There is no more time for displays of affection. We say good-bye with three kisses on the cheek and each one heads toward his or her destiny.
Just like what happened at the golf club, I am unable to drive when I reach my car. I put on a cowl scarf to protect me from the cold and start to walk aimlessly around the hamlet. I pass a post office and a hairdresser. I see an open bar, but would rather walk to unwind. I have no interest in understanding what is happening. I just want it to happen.
“I open the curtains in my office and see people out there, some walking and holding hands without having to worry about the consequences. And I can’t show my love,” he’d said.
And when I felt like no one, absolutely no one, was capable of understanding what was going on inside me—not a shaman, not a psychoanalyst, not even my husband—you materialized to explain it to me …
It’s loneliness. Even though I’m surrounded by loved ones who care about me and want only the best, it’s possible they try to help only because they feel the same thing—loneliness—and why, in a gesture of solidarity, you’ll find the phrase “I am useful, even if alone” carved in stone.
Though the brain says all is well, the soul is lost, confused, doesn’t know why life is being unfair to it. But we still wake up in the morning and take care of our children, our husband, our lover, our boss, our employees, our students, those dozens of people who make an ordinary day come to life.
And we often have a smile on our face and a word of encouragement, because no one can explain their loneliness to others, especially when we are always in good company. But this loneliness exists and eats away at the best parts of us because we must use all our energy to appear happy, even though we will never be able to deceive ourselves. But we insist, every morning, on showing only the rose that blooms, and keep the thorny stem that hurts us and makes us bleed hidden within.
Even knowing that everyone, at some point, has felt completely and utterly alone, it is humiliating to say, “I’m lonely, I need company. I need to kill this monster that everyone thinks is as imaginary as a fairy-tale dragon, but isn’t.” But it isn’t. I wait for a pure and virtuous knight, in all his glory, to come defeat it and push it into the abyss for good, but that knight never comes.
Yet we cannot lose hope. We start doing things we don’t usually do, daring to go beyond what is fair and necessary. The thorns inside us will grow larger and more overwhelming, yet we cannot give up halfway. Everyone is looking to see the final outcome, as though life were a huge game of chess. We pretend it doesn’t matter whether we win or lose, the important thing is to compete. We root for our true feelings to stay opaque and hidden, but then …
… instead of looking for companionship, we isolate ourselves even more in order to lick our wounds in silence. Or we go out for dinner or lunch with people who have nothing to do with our lives and spend the whole time talking about things that are of no importance. We even manage to distract ourselves for a while with drink and celebration, but the dragon lives on until the people who are close to us see that something is wrong and begin to blame themselves for not making us happy. They ask what the problem is. We say that everything is fine, but it’s not …
Everything is awful. Please, leave me alone, because I have no more tears to cry or heart left to suffer. All I have is insomnia, emptiness, and apathy, and, if you just ask yourselves, you’re feeling the same thing. But they insist that this is just a rough patch or depression because they are afraid to use the real and damning word: loneliness.
Meanwhile, we continue to relentlessly pursue the only thing that would make us happy: the knight in shining armor who will slay the dragon, pick the rose, and clip the thorns. Many claim that life is unfair. Others are happy because they believe that this is exactly what we deserve: loneliness, unhappiness. Because we have everything and they don’t.
But one day those who are blind begin to see. Those who are sad are comforted. Those who suffer are saved. The knight arrives to rescue us, and life is vindicated once again.
Still, you have to lie and cheat, because this time the circumstances are different. Who hasn’t felt the urge to drop everything and go in search of their dream? A dream is always risky, for there is a price to pay. That price is death by stoning in some countries, and in others it could be social ostracism or indifference. But there is always a price to pay. You keep lying and people pretend they still believe, but secretly they are jealous, make comments behind your back, say you’re the very worst, most threatening thing there is. You are not an adulterous man, tolerated and often even admired, but an adulterous woman, one who is sleeping with someone else and deceiving her husband, her poor husband, always so understanding and loving …
But only you know that this husband is unable to keep the loneliness at bay. Because something has been missing that even you don’t know how to pinpoint, because you love him and don’t want to lose him. But a shining knight promising adventure in distant lands is a much stronger lure than your desire for everything to remain as it is, even if at parties people stare at you and whisper among themselves that it would be better to tie a millstone around your neck and toss you overboard than let you be a terrible example.
And to make matters worse, your husband quietly puts up with everything. He doesn’t complain or make a scene. He believes it will pass. You also know it will pass, but now it’s stronger than you.
That’s the way things go for a month, two months, a year … and everyone quietly puts up with it.
But it’s not about asking permission. You look back and see that you also used to think like these people who have become your accusers. You also used to condemn those you knew were adulterers and imagined that if you lived somewhere else, the punishment would be stoning. Until the day it happens to you. Then you come up with a million excuses for your behavior and say you have the right to be happy, even for a little while, because dragon-slaying knights exist only in fairy tales. The real dragons never die, but you still have the right, just once in your life, to live out an adult fairy tale.
Then comes the moment you tried to avoid at all costs, one that you had been putting off for so long: the moment you must decide to stay together or to separate forever.
Along with this moment, however, comes the fear of making a mistake, no matter what decision you choose. And you hope someone will make the choice for you, throw you out of the house or bed, because it is impossible to go on like this. After all, we are no longer one person, we have become two or many, each completely different. And since you’ve never been through this before, you don’t know where it will end. The fact is that now you are facing a situation that will make one person suffer, or two, or many.
But mostly it will destroy you, whatever your choice.
TRAFFIC is at a standstill. Today of all days!
Geneva, with fewer than two hundred thousand inhabitants, behaves as if it were the center of the world. And there are people who believe this and fly all the way from their own countries to host what they call “summits.” These meetings usually take place on the outskirts of town, and traffic is rarely affected. At most, we catch sight of a few helicopters flying over the city.