“The tumor had a very complicated name. At first they told us three to five years, and that it wouldn’t be painful. We tried to keep living. We tried not to think about what could happen, and just function as normally as possible. It wasn’t so bad when we were together. But the alone moments were wrenching. When we were falling asleep. Or waking up. On the one hand it’s dark and silent, and you feel calm. But there’s always this gaping hole of fear in front of you. During the day you can cover it up. You can get busy, and focus on work, and think about other things, but the moment the distraction passes, and it’s night, and quiet again, the gaping hole returns. It’s always waiting for you, the fear that you might lose the most important thing in your life. Her name is Dobrochna, which means ‘The Good One.’ And few names in Polish are so literal. She trusts everyone the moment she meets them. She wants to believe the best about the world. She’s wise, she’s funny, she’s sexy. And we think alike: I finish her thoughts, she finishes mine. We’re so much alike that it can sometimes seem like we’re a whole being. Whenever she’s not at home, if she’s presenting a paper at a conference or something, my life changes to functioning. I get up, I cook breakfast. If I’m bored I might go to a gallery or a concert. But to be honest, I don’t really enjoy these things. My only pleasure is that I’ll tell her about them later. I feel like nothing else could exist in the world, and the two of us could be fine. We move here, we move there, we visit new places, we meet new friends, and all of them are wonderful and wise and clever, but with all respect and love, they are temporary. I could survive without them. But I couldn’t survive without her.”
(Warsaw, Poland)
‘Humans’ will be released in two days. Almost ten years in the making, the book features hundreds of stories from around the world. It includes about thirty stories, like this one, that were never featured on the blog. You can order a copy here: https://bit.ly/PreOrderHumansFB
dailybridgerton
2087
jacobvanloon
dededos
theartofmadeline
origamiaround