A Study on Loneliness

The fictional life of Marinella Beretta

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Every married couple knows that a wife and husband develop a kind of routine, especially if they have been together for a while. It's inevitable. One cannot suddenly wobble in with a completely different schedule and expect their partner not to notice. Monotony is a small price to pay for certainty.

Now, with the passing of my husband, something has changed in me. I cannot tell you precisely what, I would even go so far as to say it isn’t me who has altered, but the world around me. At first these changes came upon me little by little, like a headache which starts first in the temples, then migrates to the eyes, forehead, and so forth, blinding you. For example, there is something wrong with my toes, they look nothing as I remembered. What bothers me most are their uncanny resemblance to my fingers, yet unlike my fingers, they seem to be entirely impractical. What real use is there in having toes, and why did we evolve to have so many? I can hardly look at them and not feel disgusted. In the shower I simply have to wear my socks, and when I pry them off after, I have to look the other way. Even the thought of them sitting there, in a row of ten, sends shivers down my spine and makes me feel altogether nauseous. I see toes in everything, much like an amputee continues to feel the presence of a lost limb long after it has been amputated.

I admit, it’s presumably me who has changed, and not the world. For example, where once I loved my house, adored it even, it defined everything holy and good about my life, now I despise it. Of course, it’s a fairly decent house, with big windows and a green garden, a spacious kitchen, it even has a bath. But any place becomes ugly when one sets their mind to it. Each one of us harnesses a shell which eventually hardens and imprisons us.

Throughout the first days of my husband’s death I continued to go out. Every now and then I would be invited for a cup of tea by a neighbor, at times I would meet a friend in town. But as the days molded into weeks, then months, the invitations diminished together with my willingness to accept them. Yet, I still remained among people. At times I spent hours at a café, sitting, watching, quite happy to take refuge in the midsts of those seemingly jovial groups. I dabbled just above the surface of loneliness, though one rarely feels like laughing alone.

Now I no longer speak to anyone, never; I receive nothing, I give nothing. Every so often I glance over at his empty armchair, one of those leather ones which decline on demand. After all those months there is still the vaguest sign of an indent on the seat, made by his thin, bony back-side. The left armrest shows a dark, fingered outline. A bit higher: the configuration of his neck. For as long as I can remember, his hazel colored eyes watched me. And even now, months later, I sometimes get the warm sensation that they’re following me, staring at me from the hallway, the bathroom, our bedroom. Lonely people tend to see faces in everything.

I live in the midsts of my memories. Coats, books, old newspapers, cupboards full of his favorite wine, everything was once touched by a thought. When one is sad, one can find a justification for their sadness in everything. I find that conversing with his bedside table is just as fruitful and satisfying as spending an entire day with company.

Where should I store my own memories? What is a memory without someone else to remember it for you? You can’t put your past in someone’s pocket and expect them to understand. No, perhaps a woman such as myself, alone in this world, cannot make memories, they simply pass through her.

Three years have passed since his death, meaning I have not spoken to a soul in two. A sunbeam makes its way through the window, slicing my room in two equal parts. Through the slit buzzes a fly weakly, dragging itself along, falling then flying. Should I do it the favor of squashing it? Would I survive the loneliness? Would the death of that buzzing abomination mean killing myself? I’ll let it pass at its own accord.

Four years, more or less, have passed since his death. I should emphasize that I do see people, I simply doubt they see me. I could go to the same café everyday and get away with ordering a glass of water and be ignored. Even at the busier cafés in the square. Surely, every now and then the waiters look at me questionably, as if they cannot quite figure me out, but I doubted they know they are talking to the same person as the day before. In my loneliness I have made myself invisible.

Today marks the fifth year. Why am I here, and, I wonder, why should I stay? It is noon, I only just awoke and I am already waiting to go back to bed. It has been a good period for me, I feel almost certain I will see my beloved again soon: paradoxically, the thought of him is my sole reason for living. I should have known that that idle man would refuse to grow old in front of me. He was vain and I am angry.

I must be sick, how else can I explain this sudden fury brewing in the pit of my stomach? It’s the anger of a sick woman: my eyebrows twitch, my cheeks feel hot, my armpits are wet. My chest cramps in aggrieved spasms. How does one deal with ethereal distances? I let out a helpless scream, a defining sound in the middle of that tangible silence.

If I die now, who would know, I wondered. Life is a strange thing, you aren’t ever quite alive if no one is there to verify your existence. We are nothing but the mirror image of the person sitting in front of us.

I look at myself reflected in the glass panes. I see my face without my eyes; a paper mask, pale, translucent, as if beneath the surface blood does not flow, but some opaque liquid. Each day I look more like the corpse I will become. I am alone, without friends or future to long for, without a past to remember, a mind which has disintegrated together with my body. The only thing left for me now is to believe that the lessons of my experience were at least worth something.

It is futile to worry, it is too late. I lay dying for the second time. There is nothing left now. No more than, on these traces of dry ink, is left the memory of their freshness.

How much time will pass before someone finds me? A few days I suppose, just enough time to make it to the other side. I wonder if we’ll go back to our old routines, I very much hope so. There’s nothing like a routine to tranquilize the unstable mind.

I feel something is beginning in order to end. An adventure can never be drawn out. I have longed, irrevocably, towards this ending which will soon be mine. Each second of my life has been nothing but a part of a sequence, clung together by the narrative of my existence. Here, gone, here, gone, here. Gone. I see you clearly now, my sweetheart.

Based on the following news article, which has stayed with me since reading it two months ago:

Marinella Beretta’s body found sitting at a table in her home two years after she died