abandoned land

solitude

Photo captured by the author.

foreword: this piece was created to mark the milestone of 100 subscribers for this page but by the time i got it put together, there’s now 162! it feels surreal to think that there’s people out there who enjoy reading the things i pour out on here but i’m grateful for all of your support.

this piece was co-authored with my younger brother who was one of the first people to recognize my artistic talents long, long ago. i’m so glad he agreed to entertain me and put this together. the entire concept was his and i just helped piece it together.

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In truth, I’ve never really had a home. I’ve lived my life running from loneliness. But when you run from loneliness, you end up in lonely places. And I found myself in the loneliest of them all.

It looked ordinary enough from a distance. To those passing by, it was just another old farmhouse beneath dead trees, tucked away in the bend of another winding backroad. But they didn’t know what lived inside the walls. They weren’t there to witness the chaos or experience the silence. Night after night, I’d stand on the porch alone, watching the darkness slowly settle as the sounds of another day disappear one by one. Listening until there was nothing but the creaking of the floors and the deafening sounds of my inescapable thoughts. 

At first, the loneliness feels like an absence that can’t be ignored. Sit with it long enough and it changes, transforms. It becomes a presence, a close companion, a shadow that follows you from room to room. Death’s oldest friend.

I sat with the loneliness. We passed the time in silence long enough that we learned every sound that house could make. The echo of my footsteps in the halls, the groan of old wood settling into itself, the way the winter wind would whip against the siding. We’d hear the distant bark of a dog beyond the trees and owls who call out into the dark but give no direction. Some nights, the house felt like a refuge. Others like a tomb that was caving in on you. Most nights it seemed like chaos filled every room. But in the moments of silence, I learned what it felt like to sit still with the memories I couldn’t outrun and the questions I couldn’t answer. 

I always thought those walls would watch me die like countless others, but that old farmhouse isn’t there anymore. In its place, just an empty lot of land left behind. They say the city tore it down but I’d like to believe it was the weight of a thousand private battles, of fear, death, and despair, that finally caused it to collapse. In some ways, maybe it was. The house may no longer be standing but I am, and I carry with me that weight which brought it down.