Looking For Space // Josh Kiszka

XXVIII

10K reads! You are amazing, thank you so much ~~

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I didn't sleep well--I tossed and turned most of the night, freezing cold, leaning over the side of the bed at one point to grope blindly in my bag to find an extra sweater to put on, and woke up curled in the fetal position, alone and still cold.

It wasn't as though Josh and I slept together every night but it was most nights, and waking up in a chilly cabin with the outside world white and green and silent, and the small space next to me empty, had me feeling a little depressed right off the bat.

And I couldn't even talk to him with the complete lack of cell service.

Maybe this is good, I thought to myself, trying to convince myself of the words. It's healthy to be apart. Maybe we're being too codependent.

I didn't believe that though--it was never codependency, it was simply love. It was our style of love. I never felt smothered by Josh--apart from physically, which was usually welcome--and I knew he never felt smothered by me. So me trying to convince myself that somehow no contact for four days was a good test of our relationship just wasn't working.

I also wasn't used to waking up and stepping out to find my entire family in one room, or around me at all. I nodded a "good morning" to my dad when he looked up from the magazine he was reading and went into the kitchen--at least someone had already made coffee.

Kirsti joined me, refilling her mug after I poured myself coffee in a mug with a buck painted on it. I loved my sister deeply so I was a little shocked that I was already a little irritated by her presence then--it had only been 24 hours together--and mentally kicked myself. You're just not used to them being around like this, I reminded myself. It's early.

But Kirsti didn't actually say anything to me, she just topped off her coffee and returned to the spot she'd claimed on the couch, sighing a little and grabbing the book on the cushion next to her.

I stayed in the kitchen, picking at the scrambled eggs my dad had made, still sitting in the pan on the stove, and looked out the window above the sink. Stray snowflakes were shaken down into the air as squirrels and chipmunks messed around on the branches of trees, greenery was somewhat visible beyond the layer of snow on the ground, and that was the extent of the view.

It wasn't a bad one, it was just very quiet in every sense of the word.

The woods were even quieter as I walked through them, the only intermittent sounds being my boots trekking across the snow and leaves and some chatter from squirrels. It was a dense, thick quiet that, at first, surpassed solitude and filled me with some strange feeling of impending doom but for no reason that I could find.

I realized I had become less used to being alone with my own thoughts. Not codependency, again, but the "always there" outlet of Josh had been part of my life for a year, so wandering through silent, thick forest with nothing but my own inner monologue was a change.

Meditate, I told myself. Focus on what you're seeing and hearing.

And I did, but I also spent a fair amount of time thinking about what Josh would be saying or doing if he were there with me. I was right, too--he would have loved the cabin and the woods. Even with his high energy and sometimes nonstop speech, Josh valued his solitude.

I was hoping to come across a moose or even a deer but things remained quiet. I passed other cabins, all spread far apart and all quiet as well. After maybe a quarter of a mile I reached a clear passage to the lake, the water still and dark, fallen orange and red leaves littering its edges, and I imagined what it would be like in spring and summer instead.