Empty House
By: Jessie Dumont
Tags: Mindfulness, Creative, Mindset, Purpose, Freewrite

Empty House

Walmart.com

I woke up to an empty house. My fingers numb from existing, connected to my palms to form tools I could pick things up with or let things go of. I couldn’t remember what had happened that forced everyone to leave, but they had done so in such a quiet and silent way that it looked as though they had completely erased memories, past memories — times in my life that I wanted to let go of from the heavy and tight grasp of my fingers, and erase the past. There were no footprints to lament what was, only me and my limbs standing in the empty room.

It was easy to forget in empty rooms. Pictures of family that once hung so delicately on the wall in the living room that lay barren connected to a shag carpet from the 70s. I smiled in hopefulness, like I had been given a second chance, pressed the restart button on life, a sign from the horoscopes I looked too deeply into, begging me to move on without attachment, without feeling connected to the sweaty palms that called for me to make fists instead of prayer hands.

I studied the orange, shag rug underneath me, the empty house surrounding me was familiar and distant, I couldn’t place the heavy scent of cigarette smoke or the vertical wood panels that lined the walls of the living room. Empty was the house, the house was empty, carrying scents and images I could only observe, but not remember. It was like the wooden wall panels, the orange shag carpet and the stench of a thousand cigarettes, like how my fingers connected to my palms forcing me to study it, exercising my fingers to form fists instead of prayer hands, watching my fingers collapse and extend outward. My stomach let out a howl — summoning its pack, my digestive system, a call for help, a call for food, a noise I hand never heard before that was impossible to ignore in the empty room of this house.

The walls welcomed the echoes from my digestive system, it was impossible to ignore. My hair fell down on both sides of my head, like it was tired from wear, a symbolic gesture to the echoes of stomach rumbling turning me towards a neon sign that read: pay attention. To the limbs that cascaded down my body the neon sign had forced me to create lines in my skin and made me watch the ripple effect from the tips of my fingers back to my sweat palms. It made me notice the repeated echoes of a starving stomach, and the hair that wrapped my shoulders in its delicate and frail frame.

Finally realizing that I am alive, in an empty house, eyes blinking and feet that had endured standing at a standstill for the time being, without sway, my knees stood in unison, together and my presence became mine.

Until, I realized I wasn’t in an empty house at all —

Loud noises entered my ear drums, muffling what I thought was a sacred standstill between me and the empty house, a sanctuary of breath, a presence of present thoughts, the next thing I knew I was being yelled at,

“MOVE! THEY CALLED NEXT!” — an angry grocery consumer yelled at me from three people in back of me in a line. I was holding a spaghetti squash the same way my hands had collapsed and retracted to make a fist surrounded by vertical wood panels on the walls. I longed for being back in the empty house, to be ever so present in my body and my mind. I felt clear-headed there, without the distraction or the noise surrounding public domains that created a squabble in timelines for me, the yelling spat from one consumer, forced me to be transported back into the past to a time I was yelled at by my math teacher frustrated with how “slow” I was understanding algebraic equations, the clerk in the grocery store picking me up in my past and transported me in the future, announcing, “next” took me to unknown outcomes the rest of the day. Oh, the things I could make with spaghetti squash, what was I going to do after this grocery trip? What was next on the list? I have so much to do.

The assembly line grocery catwalk was able to show the spaghetti squash off, with the unsettling “beep” of the checkout gun, the loud obnoxious “clank” of the cashier drawer, and the wait time between inserting my credit card into the machine where my mind really went crazy with jumping from past to future with little time to be in it.

To be in the empty house with the orange shag carpet, the vertical wooden panels that lined the walls, the empty picture frames all pointing to a repeated mantra within the inner cyclical breath that my body automatically created in its vessel since birth.

In an room I perceived as empty, something that lacked memories and experiences turned into love letters to my limbs that held me in one space, sincerely in the grocery line, an intervention towards my hands to convince my fingers to turn that frustration and anger into thankfulness, fists into prayer hands, populating thoughts from the orange, shag carpet and vertical paneled wood walls and the thick cloud of cigarette smoke begging me to stand still, and be present.