He awoke each morning with the desire to do something right- to be a good and meaningful person. To be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he would be overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. " I am not sad, " he would repeat to himself over and over, " I am not sad, ". As if that one day he might convince himself. Or fool himself or convince others - that the only thing worse than being sad for others is to know that you are sad. " I am not sad, I am not sad, ". Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, in it so far was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with the heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was not a part of him at all. And each morning he would wake up with it again in the cupboard of his ribcage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the mid afternoon was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else somewhere else. " I am not sad. "
Jonathan Safran Foer
(Everything Is Illuminated)
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