Never Empty.

One of my favorite things to watch is videos of people exploring abandoned places. It's something I've always enjoyed and something I'd love to do myself. As I sat watching a few today, I started getting some thoughts, and I wanted to write them down before I forgot them all. I hope I’m able to get the main points of my thoughts across in a way that makes sense.

To begin, I'll talk about nostalgia because nostalgia is a feeling that not only lives inside me, but is the main feeling that consumes me on a daily basis. Not only for a time that I can't go back to, people who are no longer here, and moments that are now just memories, but for places and times that I was never even a part of. Maybe nostalgia and grief are the same in the sense that we ache for a time we can't get back to, but the memories and the echoes of what once was still live on inside of us. All that we miss is still happening in another universe, in other forms, but more importantly, we continue to carry it no matter how far we get from that time and place.

When I watch these videos, I try to picture the people who lived there, the whole life they built together. I try to hear the footsteps, the voices, and the laughter. Inside that house, all those sounds still exist; those people still live together under one roof. Maybe in a different form now, but still the same people who lived and loved inside those walls. We grieve people. We grieve moments, and we grieve memories, but I feel like the grief we have for places is very overlooked.

And for me, it's not just grieving places that were a part of my life that live inside my memories—it’s grieving other places that now sit untouched and frozen in time. It's grieving the memories that live inside those walls of people I don't know, moments I never lived, and wondering where the people went. Did time fly by for those who lived there, or was each day slow and full of love and laughter? Did they dance by the window at golden hour? Did they sit on the porch when it rained? Did they run so far from that place on foot that leaving their cars behind wasn't even a second thought? The questions that come with grieving places I don't know, people I never met, and a time I wasn't around for.

Every single person that walked in and out of those doors, slept in the beds, laughed, cried, and lived inside those walls is some strange part of me now because I picture them, I imagine their lives, and what happened for them to have left it all behind. There is an ache, a swirling storm inside me, as if that house has been swept up inside of me and is preparing for a gentle landing tucked inside of my soul. I grieve the people who left, the memories made, and all that was lost, but I also grieve for the houses that still stand as if waiting for someone to come back home. Inside of me, where this house now rests, the house is full of those people; the house isn’t just a house. It’s a home. Alive once again with the sounds of voices and laughter. Inside of me, the house lives on along with all those who lived under its roof, and maybe somehow, some way, those people still reside there in a different form.

So maybe somehow, some way, when we leave a place, we don't actually leave it. Parts of us remain with all those we love, all those who laughed with us between those walls. Whether we move away to a new home and someone else moves in after us, or if we move away and nature takes the house for its own, energy never completely goes away. It comes back in different forms. Maybe people and memories do that too. Maybe the lives lived come back to the same place but in ways we can't see anymore. By the things they left behind, the proof of love and life within those walls, their memories and heartbeats will forever echo on inside.

The outside of a house may start rotting and falling apart, the roof may collapse, the windows will break, but inside, between the mess left behind, dances the memories of loved ones and the lives they shared together.

A house is always full no matter how empty it may be.