February 21, 2018 Journal Entry
I turned to the internet in desperation, my alone pain is so ugly and strong this evening.
I typed in the question “I feel so empty and I don’t know why” and I found an article written by Geneve Gellardo. Here is an excerpt:
“You’re standing in a crowded place with the sweat of strangers dripping down your skin and tequila fucking your mind and cigarette smoke lacing through your hair and deafening beats hammering your ears, you can smell sex and sin in the air like cocaine and you know the high from this scene is supposed to course through your body like electricity and fire up your senses, but then for reasons you don’t know or for reasons you do know but can’t seem to accept, you just feel so detached from the moment and even from your own body as well. You feel nothing. You’re an empty shell.
So you take one last lethal shot, go home with one of your buddies and decide to get laid. Maybe human touch can make you come alive. Maybe you’d feel something even if it’s temporary, even if you know that you’ll twist and turn on a bed of lies, catching glimpses of paradise that will be gone in the blink of an eye, gone with your last cry. So you fuck, but then for reasons you don’t know or for reasons you do know but can’t seem to accept, the pleasure left you feeling even emptier.”
These words ring with familiarity. Everything I’ve been saying for months. Trying to decipher this mysterious bizarre thing that is happening inside my soul.
The author’s recommendation is not one I had considered:
“That turbulence in your mind and heart now — don’t fight it, feel it. Let the hurricane spin you around and drop you someplace new, somewhere unfamiliar. Maybe from there, you can start over.”
I guess what I want to know, is if this turbulence has lasted for decades, is the answer still to press into it? Not fight it? Let it play itself out? And then I question, have I been riding the same hurricane for decades? Or has it been a series of hurricanes? And it’s just because the time between the horrific storms isn’t long enough to identify their distinction?
I know the in between certainly isn’t long enough to recover from the last. Each storm takes more from my spirit and makes me feel less and less, emptier and sadder and more hopeless. Each storm eats at my essence and I feel I will have no soul when this is over, if it’s ever over.
Surely this pain will kill me. I won’t kill me, the pain will. I will die because not only was my soul incinerated, but the badness spread to my body and my body rotted out from beneath me in death.
I’ve moved seven times for jobs. Am I creating these storms because I’m bored? Or are my moves intended to leave the storm behind? Once again, am I the author of my own pain and demise? Or is life coming against me? And if life is coming against me, fuck give me a fucking break. I mean seriously. I need a fucking break. This is just too fucking much.
And then the guilt comes. I have friends, family, that love me. That are reaching out to me, grabbing me, actually clawing at me, grasping at pieces of clothing if they can’t get hold of an arm, desperately pulling at me to help me out of this dark, alone, terrifying place. Shouldn’t that be enough? Why do I persist in making my pain worse by clutching my endless obsession with wanting a man, a soulmate, a husband? I make myself sick. Truly I do. I have enough. Why can’t my heart embrace that truth?
Who is responsible for providing me this relief I seek? I think it is me. And the fact I can’t do it makes me truly sick. Sick in heart, sick in mind, sick in body. I fail. I fail. I fail. I fail. I die.
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash