Alone, Not Alone

"I don't like to be alone" you say, and I nod and pout my lips a little and sit on a log and scrape at the dirt with a long, skinny stick.

"Everyone is alone," I say, and this sounds like a very wise and solemn thing to say.

"Not that guy who lives next door to me," you say, "he has a really cute girlfriend and they're totally in love and stuff, and they have a ton of sex."

I nod again, but I'm kind of mad at you now because you deflated the wisdom and solemnity of what I said with your stupid comment.

"Plus they have like really long conversations afterwards, and they make each other laugh a lot."

"Okay," I say, "so they're not technically alone, but you know, like, in a more metaphorical sense."

You put a marshmallow in your mouth. "Not sure I follow you," you say.

"Just shut the fuck up," I say, and I break the stick and get up from the log and start walking into the woods.

"Where you going?" you ask, with your big dumb marshmallow mouth. I don't say anything, I just keep walking. "Do you have a flashlight?" you shout at me. I don't, and you know I don't, so I don't know why you're being such a jerk about it. I can't see you, but I assume you stuff your mouth with like 6 more marshmallows.

I'm walking angrily, and it's really satisfying because lots of things crunch and snap when I step on them. I pull a hunk of bark off a really big tree, which feels great, except it makes my hand all sappy, which is incredibly irritating. I want to just keep walking for hours until I'm completely lost and then I can starve to death or get eaten by a bear. Except that's actually really terrifying, so I'm just going to duck behind this boulder and sit in the dirt just long enough for you to start to get worried. Like maybe a half hour or something. I don't care if that sounds stupid. You're stupid, because you don't understand the inherent aloneness of being.

"My naybor's noddalone! NER NER NER." Stupid. Maybe I should cut myself on something so I can look all bloody when I go back. That'll teach you to point out fallacies in my statements of wisdom.