Silence & Space

If I hadn't faced the Void previously, I would have had to do so now. I suppose it's a blessing that I'm not having to wrestle with existential questions during these seasons of grief.

The last time I felt this isolated it was twenty years ago and I was in an abusive relationship, cut off from everyone else by a man who claimed to love me but did nothing but hurt me.

Thankfully that pain, that drama, is not present now, but I feel like there are huge empty spaces between me and everyone else, and I'm at a loss for how to bridge that space.

A good deal of it is my own fault. I've done a lot of withdrawing, like a snail pulling into my shell. I have little energy, little interest in anything, and so find it hard to make conversation, to comment, to engage. I feel like there's nothing within myself to share, and that if I am too close to others I'll simply be overwhelmed by their energy, like a cup thrust under a waterfall.

More than anything else, I want to relax into a strong, loving embrace, to be gently nurtured back to myself -- but, of course, it is that absence which is at the root of all my emptiness.

I feel hollow, as if once the extremes of grief washed through me there wasn't anything to take its place. My heart is hollow, my mind empty.