The Emptiness and My Companion

                    The Emptiness and My Companion 

I woke up.  

I woke up, that seems important somehow, though I don’t know why. Just, I woke up.  

Though where I woke up in unfamiliar. Not unfamiliar as in I never been here before, which it is, but unfamiliar as in I cannot place where I am. It is like no place I have ever been before. Everything around me seems just out of sight. Think of being stuck in a fog where you can see the outlines of objects, but not the objects itself. Just there is no fog, nor any objects insight. Just a neutral color all around me, allowing me to only see a few inches in any direction. Come to think of it, I can’t even see or feel the ground beneath my feet. I marvel at this as I squat down to assure myself that I am, in fact, standing on something. But even at a full squat and my hand reached out, I feel nothing, No floor or grass, just emptiness. This whole place seems empty.  

Empty, as soon as the word came into my mind it fits. There are no smells or sounds, you feel nothing on your skin, this place is just empty. I want to scream, and I do so, half expecting nothing to come out, but alas, my scream is audible. But as soon as I close my mouth it is complete quiet again. When you can only see, hear, and make sound, are you even awake. But I woke up, I know I did. The one certainty I have is that I am awake, I woke up. But this place doesn’t seem real, just an empty shell, that provides no sensations, nothing to draw you forward, no direction to go. I open my mouth and yell “Hello, anyone else here!”, hoping, just hoping, someone else is here, someone can hear me, someone else can confirm this place existence. That I have indeed woken up, a certainty that is starting to fade in me. But no one answers. No other voices call back, not even my echo. I am just stuck here, in the emptiness. Stuck in a place I do not even remember how I got here.  

I walk, for what else am I to do. Maybe this place has an ending. Maybe if I walk far enough, I will reach its exterior where there will be trees and grass. Maybe I will reach a wall that I can follow until I find a door to let me out of this empty place. Maybe I will find a way out into something, anything, other than this emptiness. But nothing ever changes. Everything looks the exact same, it doesn’t matter what direction I walk in, it is just a haze of emptiness. I start to jog, then run, randomly choosing which direction to head, arm reached out front, hoping to hit something, anything. I run until I am out of breath, and then I run some more. I cannot stop. Stopping would mean I have given up, stopping would mean I have accepted the emptiness, the emptiness that can’t really be a possibility. For if I accept the emptiness as all-consuming what do I do then? What hope for the future do I have? Am I really awake? No, I must keep going, I must find the way out. 

I do not know how far or for how long I have been running, but I do know I cannot continue at this pace. My breath is rapid and painful, and I can feel my heart trying to burst out of my chest. And still, I am in emptiness. I sit down, and it is everything I can do to not panic, at least not more than I already have. I know the first thing I need is to catch my breath. Finding water, I figure is an impossibility, but that is okay for I don’t really have any thrive to have a drink of water. Yet that seems wrong, for one does not go on a full-on sprint and not want water afterwards. But my thought of water was born of habit, not of need. In fact, I have not been hungry nor thirsty since arriving here. This thought does send me into a panic. Where am I, that not only is empty on the outside, but makes you feel empty on the inside as well. For that is what I feel. Empty. Like all my feelings, even my panic, is just on the surface, that the reality is that I woke up not just in an empty place but empty itself. Did I even wake? 

“WHERE AM I”, I desperately screamed, not expecting an answer, but hoping for one all the same. 

“Here,” came a voice. A voice not quite of a child, but not quite as an adult either. I turn my head back and forth trying to locate the person who the voice belongs to. Grateful that there is a voice, there is someone else here, I am not alone. At first, I see no one, but a figure finally emerges. Tall and lanky, the person strides closer into view until I can start to make out wavy short brown hair, just long enough to reach his eyebrows. He is wearing a brown pinstriped suit, shiny dress shoes, and has a yellow rose in one of the pockets. There is no rush in his pace, nor is there any hesitation.  

“Where am I?” I ask as he walks closer. 

“Here,” he again answers.  

“But where am I?” I ask hoping for a more specific answer. 

“Here,” he says again finally reaching me, offering his hand to help me up. I try to politely wave it away, a little frustrated of not getting the answer I want.  

“Where is here though?” hoping that this time I would get a different answer. 

“Here,” he says again, this time looking quizzically down at me.  

“Can all you say is here?” I finally ask, Not so much in anger, not in anger at all, more in exasperation.  

“No, I can say many things,” he says, “I can even sing if the mood provokes me to.” 

“So why won’t you tell me where I am?” 

“I did, four times now I do believe,” he says. “The answer is here; here is where you are.” 

“Ok,” I say thinking of how I can rephrase my question to not get the same answer. An answer which is not really an answer at all. I look up at him and he is again offering me his hand to get up. 

“One does not want to sit here for too long,” he says, “one will be in danger of disappearing.” 

I raise my eyebrow at this but push it aside for now. I ask, “What is this place called?” as I accept his hand and he pulls me up. Standing next to him I realize maybe I am wrong. Maybe he is a she wearing a suit with her hair cut short. Or maybe he is just a preteen rather tall for his age that has yet to complete puberty.  

“This place has many names,” he, maybe she, says taking me out of my own thoughts. “Some call it limbo, some purgatory, some even call it the in between place. It all depends on your own belief system, quite personal actually.”  

“But I woke up,” I say not just in shock, which I am, but needing the assurance that I did indeed wake up, a fact that was once a certainty to me, but not so much anymore. 

“So you did,” he or she, well let’s say my companion, says. 

“But isn’t purgatory a place you go to when you die?” I ask, giving my companion the same quizzical look he gave me earlier. 

“That is one way of looking at it,” my companion says, “but most that come here come to think about it as waking up. It did feel like waking up, didn’t it?” 

“But how can I be dead? I was just...” but here I stop. I cannot remember where I was or what I was doing before I woke. I don’t even remember falling asleep. I just woke, well died if my companion is telling the truth. All memory beforehand is gone. What is worse is I should be panicking, or at least worried about my sudden amnesia. I should be inquiring how I died. I try giving a halfhearted attempt to remember if I was sick or old, or if it was an unexpected accident that took my life. But all I can muster is a small confusion of why I cannot remember. “I can’t remember” I finally say. 

“Do you want to remember?” he asks lifting one eyebrow. 

“I don’t know,” I admit, and the truth of that statement sinks it. It does not seem to matter to me one way or another if I remember or even have a past. And this does make me scared, the not caring, for I should care. I had more feeling in me when I was running ramped, and now I can’t even muster up why I was running ramped to begin with. I know I should care, that I should be really worried, and the fact that I am not scares me. It is like any sense of what make me me is slipping away. What are we but a shell if not for the feelings we feel. Maybe I am still asleep, and this is all a dream. Does one feel in dreams? 

“Let’s go for a stroll” my companion says placing his hand on my shoulder guiding me forward into the emptiness. I say nothing for a while, thankful for his hand of my shoulder guiding the way. The emptiness continues, though I now realize I can see enough in front of me to see my companion. Not only that I can see my companion is walking on marbled floor. I look down at my feet and they are still in emptiness. The only place I can actually see beyond a few inched in front of me is when I am looking at my companion. 

“Why am I in emptiness and you are not?” I ask before it occurs to me that perhaps it is only I that can see the emptiness. 

“Because you are becoming empty inside when I am not,” my companion says matter-of-factly. There is no emotion in his voice, just a statement, not meant to invoke any feeling in the person hearing it. But the look on my face must have shown how scared that statement made me, for he quickly added “It is nothing to be afraid of, it happens to those that don't believe in anything.” 

I stop in my tracks and look up at him. He takes his hand down from my shoulder and just looks at me. I am speechless. I want to be upset and angry at what he said so nonchalantly, but honestly, I am just too flabbergasted to have any real reaction to what he said. For though I don’t remember my past life, I now do recall being an atheist. It seems suddenly unfair that my lack of belief means I don’t have an afterlife. And the fear that I have been holding inside me I feel bubbling to the surface, and I place it for what it is. I acknowledge that I do not want to become the emptiness around me. I want to feel something, be something. I look at my companion and all I can think of saying is, “But I don’t want to go” 

“Then don’t” says my companion.  

“But I had no belief system,” I explain, “I wasn’t Catholic, Jewish, or Budish. I did not follow or believe in any of the religions.” 

“Well believe in something now” my companion says. “What you believe in life does not matter, it is what you believe in now. Here is just a reflection of your beliefs. Once you decide what you believe, here will confirm to it. If you believe in nothing or cannot believe in something, anything, you will become empty. Which there is no shame in that either.” 

“So, you are telling me to pick a religion now, after I passed?” I asked 

“No, I am simply stating you have to believe in something,” he says. “Religion is an idea of the living. Here you just have to believe in something.” 

“So religion is a scam?” I question looking him straight in the eye. 

“No, one’s beliefs while they are living typically follow them here, though not always” my companion explains as he puts his hands once again on my shoulder and starts to guide me forward. “Those that were religious in life are confined and judged by those beliefs because they still believe it so. If they believe in a heaven and a hell, here becomes one or the other based on the qualifications for entry their religion gives. So religious beliefs can help guide you after you wake up here, but they aren’t necessary.” 

“But I don’t remember my past,” I say more for myself than for my companion. For how am I to know what to believe in if I have no past to base my beliefs on?  

“Do you want to remember your past?” my companion again asks me, stopping this time and looking me in the eye. 

“If it means I don’t become empty, then yes,” I say. 

“Not the same thing,” my companion says simply, once again guiding me forward. And we both become silent. As we go forward, I try to think of what to believe in, but the farther I walk the less I think. My mind becomes empty, and the fear I once had slowly disappears. Which each step further, I start to wonder why I am scared to begin with, and soon the wonder of having a fear goes away. All I have now is a little fear, and honestly, I am not even at least bit curious why I am fearful. I don’t want to go forward; I want to sit; I want to forget and be forgotten. I stop and go to sit, but the companion, the one I forgot was here, holds me up. 

“Once you sit down, I am afraid you will be too far gone to get back up” says my companion without any judgement in his or her voice.  

“What reason do I have to get back up for?” I ask, for it is true.  

“For whatever reason you are still clinging on to some belief,” my companion says. “Those that become emptiness mostly do so right away, they don’t linger like you are.” 

“What are you saying?” I ask. “That I believe in something, because I don’t. I don’t have anything to base my beliefs on, I need a past for that?” 

“You remembered you didn’t believe in religion,” my companion says simply, “so you have your memories still, you just have to want them.” 

“I just have to want my memories?” I repeat back to my companion, though right now I really do not care if I have memories or not. I just want to sit down, and I go to sit, but once more my companion, did I just forget about him yet again, stops me.  

“I will leave you now,” he says, “to let you make your decision on what to believe or not. Remember there is no shame it either choice, but once you sit, the decision cannot be undone. If you decide to stay, may I suggest start small. Believe in something small and work up from there.”  

And he walks away. And as he does my fear finally subsides. I can finally sit and become nothing, become empty, which what is so wrong with that. As my companion said, there is no shame in being empty. I take one more look at my companion and he is almost out of view. And before I sit, and he completely disappears into the emptiness I yell out to him “What do you believe in?” 

“That I woke up.” 

By Chelsea Lee Berggren