This isn't weird.

What We Started

Ben still hadn't quite figured out how to spend his time, but he knew that he couldn't spend it sitting still. When he was still, his thoughts began spiraling into a cyclone of guilt, shame, and regret, and then he would find himself involuntarily contemplating his proximity to the nearest liquor store. Stillness wasn't an option.

There were only so many hours a day he could spend poring over job listings and filling out applications, and it was physically impossible at this point for the house to be any more organized. He tried reading—he'd managed to acquire copies of a few of the novels he remembered from Millie's shelf of books she had already read—but it was difficult to stay focused on the page for more than twenty minutes or so at a time. Video games, too, failed to distract him the way they used to. Reconnecting with his friends was near the top of his priority list, but he hadn't yet worked up the nerve to actually reach out. He was still socially crippled with embarrassment for his own behavior over the previous months.

So, he walked. The only thing that really calmed his nerves consistently was the physical sensation of literally moving forward. Whenever he stumbled upon a moment he couldn't find a productive way to occupy—which was often—he just put on his shoes, went outside, and walked until he either thought of something better to do, or found himself too tired or hungry to continue. The weather was irrelevant. If it rained, he got rained on.

Sometimes he walked for ten minutes, sometimes for three hours. Occasionally he listened to music, or a podcast, but mostly he preferred to keep his ears attuned to his surroundings. It was comforting to hear the sound of life going on outside of his apartment. It made him feel like a tiny part of a larger social organism, one of many. When he locked himself away and wallowed in the dark for weeks on end, the world suffered no disruption. Everything went on just fine without him. His personal miseries were of no consequence to his neighbors. His pain seemed smaller in scale.

Sometimes, he just walked through his neighborhood. Sometimes he found a nature trail to follow. Sometimes he explored the city, finding the corners he had never seen before. One day, he happened upon a farmer's market, and quietly strolled through, just people watching. He was pulled into a conversation by a rosy-cheeked woman selling banana bread. She gushed at him for thirty minutes about how much he looked like her son, who was apparently now living in Ireland with his new husband, and was most sorely missed.

Through the course of that conversation, Ben learned a great deal about the life and times of his supposed doppelganger. His name was Rufus. He was allergic to shellfish. He knew every word of every Monty Python movie, and at least half of the television series. He still had a shelf full of spelling bee trophies at his mother's house. He'd always been a consistently straight A student, save for one B minus in ninth grade biology, because he had adamantly refused to participate in the dissection of a frog. He just loved animals. As a child he'd come home with stray animals far more often than any sane parent would consider reasonable. He went through the inevitable vegetarian phase in college, but it only lasted for about a month. He never once forgot his mother's birthday, but he liked to call her the day before and pretend he had gotten the date wrong, just to be a rascal. He was such a sweet boy, and so handsome. Or so Ben was told.

The woman let him go only when he agreed to accept an entire loaf of banana bread as thanks for brightening her day and promised her that he would call his own mother very soon. When he hugged her goodbye, she nearly wept.

It had been so long since he'd experienced a moment of connection with a stranger, he had nearly forgotten he was capable of it. It was cathartic to be reminded of the surprising ways human beings could bring each other joy. He did call his mother that night, and decided that from then on, he would make a point to be a bit more receptive to the friendlier strangers he encountered about town.