EMPTY SPACES   by Jayne Leitch
   C. 2000

     I hadn't felt anything until I looked into her eyes and saw her feeling everything.  It was the most incredible experience in the world, to be totally empty inside, and then to look up and see everything I wasn't reflected in the eyes of a frightened, tired girl.

     And then to see her realize what she wasn't seeing in me...

     Before I met Emily, I was headed for a long life in prison.  Of course, I'm still headed for that life--but now it's different.  Now I know that I don't want to be there, that I don't necessarily belong there.  Emily did that.

     She keeps telling me that I'm a good person.  That I don't have to make things worse, that I can fix almost everything I've done wrong.  But I don't get how she sees that in me, because I swear, I don't see it at all.  All I see when I look inside myself is an empty, silent space where my mistakes come from; inside I'm nowhere near as alive as she thinks I am.

     It's like...sleepwalking.  Before I took Emily hostage, I couldn't even recognize when I was doing something hurtful to someone else.  I didn't feel; I didn't see how what I was doing hurt the people I did it to, because I never hurt.  I couldn't identify with that, so I went ahead and did it anyway, because there were no consequences to *me*.  It's hard to acknowledge someone else's pain when you don't feel any yourself.

     Hell, I sold drugs to make other people's pain go away--they don't call it Ecstacy for nothing.  And I never used because I knew, I *knew* that I would hurt once the high wore off, and I do *not* feel pain.  Ever.

     I never used to, anyway.  Then I kidnapped Emily, and now...all I feel is pain.

     She would cry, and I'd be right there to see.  She cut her wrists, for Christ's sake, and it was like she was bleeding desperation--for days, the only thing I'd had keeping me alive.  And the more she bled, the more desperate I felt, until the only thing I could do was take her to a doctor.

     That was the start.  After that, the empty, dead space inside began to fill up--with her.  At first I couldn't look her in the eyes, because I knew she would see the emptiness and be afraid of me--I was afraid that she would be afraid.  And that fear filled me up a little, made me feel for her.  *For* her; I started to understand how scared she was, and I hated the feeling--so I tried not to frighten her, because every time I felt how scared she was, I felt how scared I was.  And I couldn't take it.

     Then there was the time she could have escaped, but didn't.  When I came back to the barn and found her gone, I--the emptiness came right back, and I went all silent again, inside.  But when she came back and told me that she wasn't going to break her promise to help me to the border...she told me she trusted me, that she wasn't afraid of me
anymore.  And God help me, those words took away the threat of feeling that pain, and I was happy.  I was happy because she had given me her trust, and I wasn't going to misuse it for the world--because making her hurt that way would hurt *me*, and I never felt pain.

     I had my first nightmare that night.  And when I jolted awake, and I saw Emily sleeping peacefully, comfortable in her trust that I wasn't going to do anything to her while her guard was down--I realized that for some reason, I wasn't empty anymore.

     I was full of guilt, and shame, and self-loathing.  And God damn it, it hurt.

     I felt--everything.  I had sold drugs to guys who used them to rape innocent girls.  I had stood by, watching, while a man was murdered.  I had made people think that a girl under the influence of drugs *I* sold might have killed that man, might have been raped by that man, might have partied with no remorse with that man.  I had kidnapped that girl, and now--I had let myself feel enough for her that I'd caused myself pain.

     I hated myself, because now I was feeling too much to ever be empty and silent again.

     As we kept going, I couldn't stay quiet inside.  Every second I wasn't speaking to her, I was listening to the voices from what I was feeling, the loud, angry, self-recriminating voices that told me what I'd done wrong, why it could never be right again--and how much I was hurting because of my own stupid actions.  Emily knew; she'd talk a mile a minute, laughing, joking, telling me things about her family and friends--but every word, no matter how I responded on the outside, just made the voices on the inside that much harder to ignore.  And when we separated at the border, when I had to go on by myself...I couldn't.  Without her there, the emptiness started to come back, and for the first time in my life, I was afraid of it.  At least when I felt something, even if it was the pain, I could say that I was alive.  With nothing inside me but the silence and the empty space, I might as well have been dead.

     So I went back for her, and I got caught.  And while the police officer was cuffing me, I looked over at Emily, saw her pleading with the detective, telling him anything she could think of to help me--I saw the pain that I was causing her, and I felt it, too.

     Outside, I have a cell all to myself, which means silence every hour of every day.  I have visitors who tell me I'm a lying, manipulative murderer, who tell me that Emily is much better off never seeing me again.  I have Emily, refusing to stay away, refusing to let me keep her from getting hurt.

     Inside, all I have is an empty space, filled up with pain.

End.

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