There’s a place that we go, inside our heads. Sometimes it’s with sound that calms us. Sometimes it’s with nature. Sometimes it’s with another person, who we trust to take there.
I trusted someone, someone who knew me a long time. I took him to that place and showed him around. I showed him all the levels, the view from the windows. I let him touch the furnishings, play my piano, rest a while on my sofa. I took him to my bed where I joined him. I let him see the paintings on the walls, understand their meaning and why they were there for so many years. I even let him hang his own to comfort mine. In fact, I let him unpack his things, and put them away safely. Store them for when he needed them again. He never needed them, we shared mine. We shared it all.
Today he gave back the key. He took down his art work, emptied his drawers. He told me they were better suited to another place. But that home was dark and empty, why would he ever want that place again? Because that place haunted him, and though I did everything, he could never leave it behind.
So I shut the windows, closed my curtains to the beautiful view that we had once embraced, and never looked out again. Was it the clear ocean? Or an endless countryside we could walk together? I don’t remember now, and it doesn’t matter. The view is what we dreamt of, and now there is no dream, there is nothing there to be seen. He sits in his dark place, and I now in mine.