When I asked him what it was like to have this relationship, he took awhile to respond and then said, "I can't put it into words." When I talked to Leslie, whose name has been changed for this article, she asked me if I understood what it was like to be alone; not just to be lonely but a deeper aloneness, a life only with yourself. It was the worst thing in the world.
Mason had forgotten so much when he was trapped in his bed and in his body; he had forgotten the smell of the air, and often yearned even to be able to stand in a parking lot in Ipswich. Even here in the U.S., where he had become an inspiration to people who wanted to lose weight and who wrote to him on Facebook—he'd motivated his own church pastor in Athol to lose more than 300 pounds—he'd spent years essentially solitary, alone in his little room with a bread-maker and his pencils and the vegetables that were a part of his healthy diet, alone sitting on the stoop waiting for the 4 o'clock bus, alone with his sagging skin.
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