"Tell me, Evan Miller, do you ever feel like leaving?"
"Leaving? Where to?"
"Hmm…I don’t know… Somewhere far.."
The buzz of the coffee machine accompanied him every day as Evan went about with his morning, moving around the kitchen slowly while eating the stale cereal he often put together for breakfast.
The stack of unwritten papers his therapist provided stayed untouched on the living room table, right beside the empty cup of coffee he had left three nights before when he stared at the pages, thinking just what to write down.
"I want you to write about your feelings, Evan." the kind-looking woman had said to him after their third session. "You have been shutting yourself out for too long. You need a way to release these pent-up emotions inside you, and writing is the best way."
Evan hadn’t quite understood what she meant by writing it down back then. And as he eyed the papers while passing the table, he still couldn't understand it.
What was he supposed to write about? His feelings? He hardly felt anything these days. Besides the all-consuming numbness that seemed to take over him from time to time, he felt completely empty.
”There’s a void inside all of us, Miller. Some of us just choose to not see it, too busy lighting up candles to rid of the darkness in our hearts.“
The words rang true in the end it seemed. The void, Evan could feel it inside him these days, growing with every breath, throbbing and expanding as it tore him apart bit by bit. And unlike before, the willpower to fight it had left him completely just as everything else did along with those haunting eyes he tried not to remember desperately. But it proved to be a hard thing to do, when the flat he lived in had memories of the same person scattered around every corner.
The sound of his voice sang along with the coffee machine. His laughter echoed through the hallways when Evan walked by. Walls that are stripped of any pictures still told stories about moments he tried his best to forget. Even the scent of his used cologne still lingered around the bathroom sink no matter how many times Evan scrubbed it clean. And his eyes, those damn sad eyes, they followed him wherever he went, from the balcony to the kitchen, never looking away.
How long did it take for a place to fade into nothing? Evan had removed every picture frame, every little trinket that had the faintest touch left by the older man, yet, David Woods seemed to live and breathe inside the house just the same, even in his absence.
"So tell me, Evan Miller, do you ever feel like leaving?"
Leaving felt pointless when his own shadow reminded him of someone else.
How far was 'somewhere far' anyway? How far did someone really need to go to forget about someone completely? How further away did he need to push himself so the memories no longer haunted him?
Evan wished he knew the answers. But just like David said; in the end, he was nothing but a blind child, who ran around in circles, desperation looking for something, anything that would take him home.
Just a part of a fiction I am writing. Others can be found here.
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