The Empty Chair at the Table

After leaving a relationship, friendship, job, or familiar life, the empty space can become very persuasive.

It tells you that the old arrangement must have been better because at least something occupied the chair.

This is how people return to situations they had excellent reasons to leave.

Emptiness is uncomfortable, but it is not the same thing as error.

A cleared room looks barren before it looks available.

Give absence time to become space.

Fill some of it deliberately: a new routine, an old friend, a class, a Saturday morning that no longer belongs to someone else's habits.

And leave some of it empty long enough to discover what you actually want there.

Do not invite the wrong thing back merely because the room echoes.