The fumes of primer lingering from last night left a thick sour fog in the air that launched my thoughts into a hole of nearly forgotten memories that had been piling up in my brains recycle bin. It's strange how something as insignificant as an odor can dig so many things out of our closets we had once forgotten existed.

How many of these invisible memories stored in our brains subconsciously effect our decisions and disposition? I spend too many countless hours obsessing over fate and karma when really, I may just be a walking computer programmed by random things I’ve seen or heard. Is there a soul in me or have I just brainwashed myself into thinking there is?

Emotion. When I laugh, cry, or love, does that rush of overwhelming emotion mean anything more than a flash of recycled memories? I’d like to think it does. I’d like to think I exist beyond this planet and lifetime, that my soul will have another place to think, create and learn once my body reaches its end.

It was a one story house. I can’t remember which one, and I can’t remember what city or state I was in. All I can remember is the empty room I was standing in. It was one of those moments where I told myself then that I would never forget that moment, and I had forgotten it completely until this stale primer-filled air engulfed my senses.

I was probably 6 or 7 years old, but I can feel now exactly as I felt at that moment.

We were moving again, I was standing on the wooden floor staring out of the open horizontal binds. It smelled of fresh primer, the sun was glaring through the blinds and leaving a trail of yellow dusty lines across the room. I could see my bed in pieces on the front lawn, the movers were packing up the last of our stuff. We would be leaving soon. I wasn't sad.

I tried to cry every time we moved, but I only actually did once. I never really knew any of my friends and they always thought I was really shy. I wasn't shy I just never had anything to say because I didn't understand them. I never missed my friends or teachers, I missed the empty space. I always felt like it was the silence around me that understood me most, the tree I stared at through my window at night, and the way everything around me stayed the same while different people came and went.

I was standing in my empty room at that moment to say goodbye to the silence, the empty space that I knew would stay the same even after I left. I don't remember actually walking out of the room and getting into the car. I don't think all of me ever actually left that day.

A part of me must reside in every square inch of space I've ever drifted through.

Therefore, a part of a million other souls must reside in the same space I now occupy. Maybe that's why the silent empty space understands me the most. Because everyone feels trapped in their own enigmatic universe, and somehow through all of our confusion we accidentally shed bits of our fears and secrets in the silent empty spaces we leave behind. And although we never really know if something makes sense or not we can sometimes feel it all around us in the invisible memories clinging to the air, temporarily forgotten.