The feeling overcame me again. The feeling of utter emptiness. I would rather be happy, sad, angry, slightly disgruntled -- anything to escape the vapidness that I've been experiencing increasingly often lately.
Usually, distractions interrupt the episodes, but I'm alone -- left to wallow helplessly in my abyss of nothingness. Usually when I'm with people I can force away the "feeling," and act like I'm capable of being mildly interested in the mundane surroundings, the mundane people, the mundane me; but for the time being, I'm alone, where the hollowness can dig out a void in my being, like a hungry tiger mercilessly taking what he wants and leaving me to rot.
The tiger has me pinned to my bed. Every attempt to wrench myself from his clutches is met by a sharp, heavy paw to the face as it reminds me of the futility of trying. The upbeat, triumphant sound of a Mendelssohn symphony wafting into my room from the adjacent loft mocks my uselessness. Its melody -- forceful, yet graceful and lovely – momentarily drowns out the howling of my internal void and serves as the anthem to my imagined world -- a perfect world, free of the plagues of the real world that nurture the gray, amorphous seeds of nihilism in my being. Outside my window a storm cloud retreats, giving way to a brilliant pink sunset – a tribute to a new era that, it seems, will never come.

I realized I was dreaming when I saw his face. My best friend -- I hadn’t seen him in so long that I hardly recognized his slightly slouching frame that somehow still exuded confidence and the understanding, knowing smile that was singularly his. But his eyes – uncommonly kind and gentle in a world that had grown so cold – stared back at me and caught my attention. He didn’t say anything with his voice, but he didn’t need to. We stayed looking at each other, or more accurately, peering into each other’s soul just as we used to. Since the Great Divide five years ago, we hadn’t been able to see each other in person; we could only speak over the phone, but carefully, so I welcomed this momentary delusion. After the third civil war the United States was divided, with two separate “nations” formed to govern their people according to their respective version of correctness. The split was largely regional, similar to the ones before the first and second civil wars – but this time it was different. There was a finality to it. There was no bloodshed, and negligible opposition. There was just a silent understanding that neither party had any desire to reconcile. Leaders of the Divide cited “irreconcilable differences” and left it at that. A clean divorce.
Still, there was a tension between the entities since the revolution that could be cut with a knife. It hovered stagnant in the air and lurked threateningly over the shoulders of the aware. The two parties of the Divide formed the Left States and the Right States, but each side was blessed yet cursed with the legacy of the previously united nation. The treaty at the time of the Great Divide divvied up the military resources equally between the powers and exhumed the ambient threat of mutual annihilation that had both frightened and comforted the world’s citizens during the Cold War so many years ago.
The Divide forced many to relocate. My family stayed on the Right, while Finn, my best friend, relocated leftward. In two separate raging seas of fanatic adherents to the respective views of the Right and Left, we were moderates, bonded together against the imposing extremist agendas. He was the first to really listen to my “silly ideas” of compromise and logic. There were only a few people I dared to tell about my ideals, and all but one brushed them off as unimportant. It was easier to unconcernedly subscribe to the political stances of the geographically prevalent party. It was safer, too. Openly going against a few of the Right’s pillars could mean my ousting from social circles and possibly the suspension of my rights, or rather, privileges as a citizen of the Right States.
Suddenly my pink cell phone buzzed loudly on my nightstand, snapping me out of my dream-like state. It was Finn.
“Hey,” I almost shouted through the phone, my excitement from the vision obvious, at least to me.
“Hi, sorry to call so late – er, early.” I hadn’t even noticed the time. It was five o’clock in the morning. “I just had a, um, dream about you. But I wasn’t sleeping, at least, I think I wasn’t,” he rambled on. “It kind of flustered me. We just stared at each other. I’m not sure –“
“I just dreamed that too. It’s kind of shaken me. It made me realize how much I miss you,” I admitted.
“I need to talk to you. In person. I need to see you.”
“It’s not safe. They’re monitoring --,” I interrupted.
“We’ll figure it out. How soon can I come see you?”
“As soon as possible, “ I breathed back, incapable of hiding my enthusiasm. He was silent for a long minute.
“I can be there next Tuesday afternoon.”
“Perfect.”
We nearly sang our goodbyes in all our excitement. I looked up out the window to a rising orange sun beaming through last night’s remaining cumulonimbus clouds. It was the start of a new day.