The usual routine of life awaited her, but this morning she welcomed it. It was mundane and repetitive, but it revved her mind just enough to keep her in a place of silent forgetfulness. It felt good to feel thoughtless. Even though the scent of sadness wafted in the back of her mind, she could stand and move about in a distracted sort of way that helped her ignore it. However, her morning bliss soon rotted away, exposing that scent more pungently, and she began to feel the tightening in her chest reminding her of what had happened.
He was gone.
She reached for her phone and opened it up, only to feel the tinge of sadness on the night he asked her to erase everything of him from it. His photos were gone, his number was deleted, and all of their back and forth bantering text messages were now a memory floating in a million distant and scattered pieces somewhere in her head. Although she struggled to understand, she remembered he had said why she needed to erase it all.
"When I'm working out of sight I want you to remember that I'm still here. I don't want to exist in your phone or even in your memories, because that would be a lie. I need you to trust the emptiness and let it help you find me in the kinsmen." His voice was so reassuring and solid. She had agreed easily and even handed him her phone to do everything necessary that he had instructed.
But now that he was gone, the phone laughed at her and she hated holding it. Hated what he made her do, and hated that she was without anything to help her remember him, she had nothing except the miserable emptiness he had mentioned. Emptiness.
The thought sounded ridiculous and she quickly went through her morning routine and headed out the door for school.
It was odd, but she went about her day just as she did many years before having met him. She went to class dressed in spring colors and her hair in loose waves at her shoulders and sat in the seat to the farthest left, closest to the door in case she had to excuse herself. From any onlooker she would have looked quite happy, but inside she was only doing what she knew how, routine.
It was incredibly strange how easily she could step into a mental fog--keeping her from him.
The lesson was about historical oil paintings on the French Revolution, one of her favorite eras, but she was in a fog. All the other graduate students were eager to give their opinions and thoughts, but she heard nothing but the sniffles and sighs that were let out in the room by her colleagues. She listened to a student behind her with sinus issues as if his nose were a dripping faucet having to sniff back the mucus accumulating at the edge of his nose. It made her sad, but her face was like stone.
The professor ended the class with a special PowerPoint slideshow from his last trip to the Louvre, and ended with Eugene Delacroix's oil painting "liberty leading the people." Her eyes glazed over with wonder as she looked at the slide. Liberty. It brought her back to what he had said about his service to the King. She couldn't quite put her finger on what it was he had wanted to do, but she remembered the impassioned look on his face when he spoke about liberty. At the time she found it cute and even admirable that anyone could be so strongly about such an idea as liberty, but she herself found it difficult to enter into the cause. It didn't seem real or very pressing the way he explained it to her. She had been listening, but she hadn't really been hearing.
The lights came back on and the grads began putting their things together and getting up to leave. She sat there for a few minutes longer than normal until she remained with the professor who was packing away his laptop and papers into a stiff black briefcase.
"Thank you professor," she said in midair of his scuffling.
"I'm glad you enjoyed it," he replied with a glance up and back down at his hands gathering up the rest of his things.
She hesitated to say something more, but swallowed the chance and got up with her bag, leaving the room all to the professor.
The drive back home was warm and bright by the late noonday sun. She headed to the same cafe around the corner of her house, ordered a black coffee and found a table by the window.
She pulled out her laptop only to realize that the outlet was farther than her cord would reach. The window seat was her favorite, but it was also risky to sit there because the extension outlet was only available on some days--namely the days when Alvin was working as the barista. She didn't see him, and the disappointment of not being able to plug in her laptop felt twice as discouraging.
She hated not having what she wanted when she wanted it, and in matter of minutes regathered her things and left the coffee shop with her coffee to go.
Life felt drained from her. Maybe this is why he wouldn't tell me what would happen. She thought to herself. The sun was still out as she drove home, but she couldn't bask in its brightness because of the fog she was in.
Everything was lifeless and she didn't care to enjoy it because he wasn't with her to tell her what it all meant. It pressed the notion that she would have to figure things out for herself, even the things meant to be beautiful, and that felt too daunting for her. She liked the way he explained things and brought everyday things to life in a beautiful way, the things he shared and how his face beamed were what made everything so much more exciting. Pulling up to her house she dreaded going in, but had nowhere else to go. This was her home.
Once inside and settled on a sofa chair she quietly opened up her laptop to read about the Prince's latest whereabouts. It meant more to her now than before to know what was going on with the one person who had the most money and power in the world. She was a citizen of the Prince, so it had always been what every citizen did to know what was going on in the Prince's life. It was the same thing, more elaborate parties and galas, trips to elaborate places, dressed in more immaculate clothes, and photographed with more desirable people just as beautiful as the Prince. She shut her laptop screen closed.
It feels like failure and misery. It's heavy and it hurts because it makes me feel worthless. It feels empty and lonely. I feel disconnected and all alone without anyone to love me. I feel lifeless and immobile as if there is no more reason for me to do anything. Things look bleak and dull, boring.
He had told her to write down exactly what the emptiness brought her because he said it would somehow help. A moment passed and she felt a soft glow rising from the emptiness within her. For a second it was as if the emptiness she felt was a beautiful light so bright and endless that it swallowed up the rest of the world. The emptiness felt full.
Her phone buzzed as a text message came in and she snapped out of what had just happened. It was time to meet Elle for dinner.
Tomorrow she would figure out how to find the kinsmen.
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