The bus was not empty, it was in a strange place, but not too full, so everyone could be scattered out as though you did not really want anybody to have you. An unoccupied seat was beside me. So long as it is a mere fact then it should not have been a problem. But all this was somehow dependent on it.
The spot had not been left open in three years. Not a single time. It was not important when we had a fight, when we barely spoke to each other, or when we were annoyed with one another. She would sit there invariably. Same old thing every single morning. She would complain regarding the bus driver. I would attempt to pretend to be deaf. She would take one of my earphones, and I would act that I was irritated when I never minded. We did not talk a lot most of the time. We didnt need to, really. It was sufficient to just be there with one another. It became something you assumed and got used to after a period and even forgot about it.
Then one day she failed to come up.
There were no loud and dramatic fights, no screaming and no we need to talk. Our lives just...split. Slowly. Quietly. Various things that mattered to us even more without disturbing the scene.
It was difficult to identify it in the beginning. That is the strange thing. A loss does not always come immediately.
And here I am, alone and my empty chair. The absence of it is still weird, even more than all her presence ever was.
The ride feels longer.
Silence is suffocating.
I even now turn back, half, to see her, and then I think that she is gone.
Human beings tend to make a drama out of not seeing people, which is connected with crying, sending late night messages and regretting. But the absence of a person may also be very insidious and silent. It might be muscle memory. As an illustration, you are sitting in the same posture and you realize that the individual who saved your picture, is not in the frame anymore.
The unoccupied chair does not symbolize the vacuity. It is a sign of the lack of the impact that individual has had on me. My entire routine in a day was altered by her departure, not only at the time of my sitting at this place.
My thoughts of closure were that it entailed a last word. One deep understanding. This is one of the emotional endings that help to close all the loose ends. However, as a matter of fact, it is extremely rare that things work out so well. A great deal of things just do not stop. It is simply that they fade away. Your permission, too, without your permission.
One day you are turning funnies. The following, you are strangers who are very much acquainted with the secrets of each other.
The bus keeps on going. New passengers come and go. The chauffeur does not mind where people sit. The personal loses in life have little time to stop.
And maybe that is the worst part not that people go, but that the world goes on like nothing is different and you are silently adapting to a different form of normal.
I first had the temptation to occupy that vacant chair immediately. Anyone. Talking. Distractions. Noise. Anything to conceal the silence. Nevertheless, it reached my conclusion that I was not ready to that. There are places that must be left empty at some point. And not that you are unable to move on, but that you are making out.
I still take the same bus. Still sit in the same seat. Not that Im in ill spirits, but that Im training myself to be able to lose without really having to pretend that nothing was important.
Vacancies are not expected to be immediately filled.
They remain in order to remind them that there was something real there. The fact that the end of everything is not always a waste. That there are certain relationships that do not leave dramatic scars behind, but provide silent lessons.
My teacher was sitting in that empty chair, this made it clear to me that not to be alone together is a sensitive thing. We are so accustomed to our beloved people that we just assume that they will always be there, like they are part of our home and will be as constant as before until a death or separation comes to teach us how easily our habits are altered.
And now that I look at that spot beside me I feel no grief at all.
Just consciousness.
Someones stays.
Someones go.
However, the lack always serves as a lesson to you in self knowledge => what you considered important, what you assumed, and what type of relationships actually were important.
And perhaps it is in this that the word vacancy really means.
Not emptiness.
But still, even after it is gone, a trace of something that altered you remains.