Why Are You So Sad? Read Online Free PDF

that surrounds you, but minus any improved understanding or clarity regarding why or how we are to be in our lives. Maybe it is pointless to try to explain. It isn’t really necessary to the retelling. The gist is: Her mouth was moving. Words were coming out. I felt a familiarity with the experience of falling upward and away from the content of what she was saying, and this transitioned into a fuzzed-out ringing in my eardrums. Alternate words then began to come out of her mouth. These words I
could
hear clearly, though they didn’t correspond with the movement of her lips; she was suddenly an actor in a foreign film with the dialogue hastily dubbed in. The new words were saying, “She’s trying to tell you things you don’t need to hear. People will do this. They will talk you out of what you are trying to do, because they are invested in this illness. But you are onto something. Why else would you be feeling this way? It is the nature of the illness to think you are crazy for suspecting it even exists. That’s how it takes over. Fight it. Nod at your wife like you are listening to what she is saying, but in your head know that you will stick with this. You’ve taken your survey. You saw the answers. This isn’t make-believe.” It felt good to hear somebody say that, even if nobody was really saying that. It felt good until I looked at her eyes. They were concerned, like I was an injured animal, and even though I suspected she was trying to talk me out of something, I couldn’t deny that her eyes were particularly beautiful at this moment. I have overlooked brown. It doesn’t have the flash of blue or green, but the browns in her eyes were subtly layered, like the earth, or a delicate sweater knitted by hand—something to support you under your feet and keep you warm at night. Her eyes were trying to reach me, as she pushed an envelope across the table in my direction. And then finally her speech—the speech that was aligned with the movement of her mouth—returned. She said, “I’ve been holding on to this envelope for you for a while now, and I think the time has come for you to open it.” I’m pretty sure that’s what she said. That’s how I have it ordered in my memory. She passed me an envelope, expressed some concern, and got up with her dishes. That’s the pattern. She washes her dishes and leaves for work.
    On the way out she swooped in for a kiss to my forehead. As she put on her coat, she looked back at me from the hallway. She paused to say one more thing but instead made a face that was the equivalent of another kiss.
    I said, “Have a good day at work,” but I could barely hear my voice as I said it.
    As she left I stared at her, I stared at her ass in her skirt, and I recalled staring at her ass in college, where we had first met. We were both in the same class: “The History of Science.” It fulfilled a requirement. We enjoyed the class. We both appreciated science from a distance. We both liked electricity and birth control. She was the fourth person I had ever slept with, and it was the first time it didn’t make me feel like either a baboon or an astronaut. Sleeping with her put me on Earth, and that was a feeling I wanted to marry.
    The envelope she had given me had my name on it. It was written in my own handwriting. There was no postage. No return address. I put the envelope in a stack of mail I continue to build on. I have an aversion to bills and other things addressed to me. I avoid opening them until the tower of mail gets so high it begins to spill over. Then I reluctantly face up to it.
    I was much more interested in Brenda’s survey than the envelope with my name on it. So that’s where I shifted my attention:
    NAME: BRENDA CHAMPS
    Are you single?
    Not yet.
    Are you having an affair?
    Not yet.
    Why are you so sad?
    Did I say I was sad? I don’t think that I did.
    When was the last