Descartes

Man loved Woman. Actually he wasn't as sure in it as he tried to dissect that rationally, yet every time he was forced to be apart from Woman, he felt sharp biting in his soul. His Mind and Logic tried to convince him in absence of soul, but at the same time these two couldn’t explain him the origins of that real, physical pain he felt.

Man sat on his old, well-worn sofa and thought. Man thought often, that there were days when his discussions between his Ego, Logic and Mind went so hot, that time passing by passed as well these eight hours he should have been at work. Luckily Man had a good job: his work contained much thinking, too, and for his bosses were open-minded, Man was able to do his work-thinking later in home.

"I think, so I am," Man thought about Descartes. These words were on the wall in his cabinet, framed. Woman didn't like that. By her understanding Man was lost in his thoughts so often that it seemed to her she was living alone in their apartment. Woman had once hanged to wall a paraphrase "You think, so You aren't... here." Man was angry then, because Woman's logic was strange.

"If I think, then I am, am I not?" he grumbled then. "I wouldn't be able of thinking, if I wasn't."

"Yes," Woman nodded, "but I can't feel that You are. While you think, I feel myself alone. Alone here, in this bed, in this room, in this house."

"But I am here. I think right beside you. Don't you feel that I am?" was Man amazed about Woman's stupidity.

"No!" said Woman, turned her back and fell asleep.

Man was thinking. He had a problem. Woman had told him in the morning that she is moving back to her mother's, because she wasn't strong enough to live alone. And again - Man didn't understand her and that's why he was thinking now. He couldn't catch how it was possible to be and not to be at the same time. "That's impossible," Logic said. Man agreed.

"Maybe Woman thinks, you're not good enough for her," Ego offered. Man didn't agree with that. If it were so, Woman might have left long time ago, not now - after twenty-seventh year of living under the same roof. "Maybe she's a bit slowly?" whispered Ego, more likely to itself.

"No!" Man shouted. "She's a very good person, very good Woman. Yet she has always been talking that I am not."

"Have you considered possibility that she might have autism" Mind asked, scratching its head.

"Ehh... What is that?" Man asked.

"I do not know exactly, but I think I read from somewhere, that there are some people who do not distinguish well what happens around them, living like in their own world. They wish to make them understandable to others, yet they don't know that no one understands. Well - something like that," Mind told.

"I don't think so. I understand her well. Mostly. But sometimes she says that I am not. That she does not feel that I am."

They stared at each other for a long time, everyone tried to go into problem from their point of view. Only Ego blushed slightly - maybe was ashamed of his last remark. Once Mind shivered like it got the idea, then fell back to its position. There reigned the silence, full of heavy thoughts.

"Actually... She has never told that you aren't," Logic started carefully like being afraid of breaking the silence that had been around them more than half an hour.

"But she has," Man raised his eyebrows. Three pair of eyes was looking at Logic which made Logic wish to hide under the chair. At last it found itself.

"No, she has not. Woman has always told that she feels like you aren't."

"So?" the question came from three mouths at once.

"She doesn't say that you are not. She says she feels like you are not."

"But I feel that I am," man laughed. Ego smiled as well, but Mind fell to its thoughts.

"No. You know that you are," Logic argued. "But can you feel that?"

Silence covered them once more. But just for a moment now. Everyone rose their heads, looked each other with shining eyes and they knew that something has changed.

Man jumped up and run to the words of Descartes. Using his waterproof pencil, he wrote new line there, went to the phone and dialed Woman's number. Fifteen minutes later, after he had finished his call, he smiled widely and looked to the board on the wall again.

"I think, so I am. Descartes
I feel, so I live. Man"