I meant to write to you last week, but life had other plans in mind. I ended up accompanying a friend, even though I had claimed to be exhausted that Wednesday and avoided, forgot, put aside other plans I had, one of those being this letter.
It might’ve been for the best. I’ve been a bit heavier than usual, bleak, as if I’m dragging a dead body, like I’m stuck. Last week I felt unlike myself. It has been a long, long time since I could say I felt that empty. I laid in bed all tucked in, trying to journal, pen hanging in the air waiting, waiting, a bird seeking for a branch to land. I had spent that whole day swimming in my own thoughts, watching them float, where were they now? I couldn’t hear a thing, sense a thing, it was all muffled, background noise. So I asked, “Is this emptiness?”. I stood still, breathing in, breathing out. “Do I feel empty right now?” The silence seemed to agree.
I’m not a stranger to emptiness. At 16. 17, I’d get these periods of nothingness every now and then, not enough times to classify as “often” but too many to fall on “rarely”. You know how older folk say their bones hurt when it’s foggy? There were days where my heart knew before my head could make any sense of what was happening. It wouldn’t last more than a day, although while it happened, it was unbearably slow, torturous. My two companions were distraction and patience. Like a lullaby, I’d sing to myself that all things end, and so would the emptiness. If not the emptiness, than the day wouldn’t last beyond its 24 hours. Can I call these words ‘comforting’ if they changed nothing about the condition I was in? Or is it only a question of trying to appease, to make a situation hurt less?
How can one even begin to explain what emptiness feels like? How do you define the absence of something? I see it as a plate at the dinner table with no mouth to feed. As pitch black, the darkest, infinite and starless sky. Because I lack words, I try to find echoes, hear what those that experienced it have to say: it is as if you’re wooden; as if you don’t exist if no one else exists, or if I don’t exist as if I’m not being watched, turning into a shell or trying to fit a square into a circle. It’s not depression or loneliness, it is not hopelessness and dissociation either.
Nothing means anything. I can’t find it in myself to smile or laugh or empathise, to react. The world could end and I’d stay still as it all crashes down. It is one of the strangest and most frustrating experiences in my life. It makes feel otherworldly, like the Other, the elephant in the room. It’s realising the house is haunted, and you’re the ghost. There is a loomingness, a tension you can’t touch or grasp or choke or kill, only bear, swallow, withstand. I’m left raw, naked, vulnerable, with nowhere left to hide. Maybe it’s too intimate for words, too indescribable.
It all disappeared around 18, or so I thought. I never really stopped to wonder why the episodes were gone. Since they weren’t here anymore, I let them go. Who wouldn’t wish to stay in the joy forever? Celebrating the end, basking in the shine, the glory of realising you don’t have to through a hard, miserable experience again? But it’s back. Did it return because life finally felt stable? Like some sort of cosmic reminder that it can’t be the way I made it? In the past, I couldn’t recognize myself when it happened. It’s as if I switched souls with someone but lost mine somewhere along the way. Feeling absolutely soulless. I didn’t remember it being this hard. It is… terrifying.
A part of what it makes this so scary it’s the indifference. For a person that cares so much, that worries as if she is breathing, to feel so apathetic towards the same uncaring world you welcome any other day, it tips your footing. Everything is usually so intense, to become so empty so suddenly, it’s as if someone knocked the wind out of your lungs. As if there is nothing left of me to give. I want to rip my heart out and stomp on it until it feels something other than this emptiness, this bleak, hollow nothing. Before I know it, I am finally feeling something, which is anger, that might just be fear.
This episode was similar to the others, except for one thing. After tiptoeing around anger and helplessness for two days, I shrugged and wondered, what if this is who I am? It may sound crazy, yet I was consoled with that thought. Thinking that something odd and unnatural didn’t have to be immediately carved out. removed, that it wasn’t acne in the middle of your forehead you have to pop. Until that moment I’d cut through myself with a blade in the shape of the word “Wrong”. I’ve always defined myself through strong emotions, and this nothingness was as heavy as so many other emotions I’ve carried in the past. Is it possible that this may just be the way things are?
Did you know that chronic feelings of emptiness are tied to a lack of a stable sense of self, related to an unstable self-identity? We all get to be someone in this life, ourselves. We’re different, and we’re so similar, and we’re special, and here I stand not knowing who I am, a island in the middle of the sea. You can’t look up how to make a personality by the way, I’ve searched it, there’s no 10 steps, no recipe to follow. I don’t even feel as if my emptiness can be considered chronic, given the gaps, so I shouldn’t count myself in a place I don’t belong, but I relate deeply to that notion of being no one, even when the emptiness does end. That I only exist within the realm of someone’s else attention and focus, that I live by attaching myself like a parasite.
I said to the the sun
“Tell me about the big bang”
The sun said
“it hurts to become”
So I try to build distance, until I read that strengthening relationships can not only reduce the intensity of emptiness, it can help you figure out who you are. We do leave in society, and participating actively in life, in community, will unfold, develop who we are. I’m left almost laughing. Isn’t this contradictory? What am I to do now? Who says this has to be wrong, fixed? Does anyone really know who they are? Don’t we all leave the door open? Aren’t we all searching? If I continue around others, it’ll be dangerous for everyone, but isolating isn’t a long term solution others, and I so badly wish to not be alone. I know this moment doesn’t have to define me, but it’s sheer strength knocks me, trips me, gives a heavy punch.
Coincidentally, when I was going through all this, the movie “Past Lives” about these two star-crossed lovers that don’t end up together in the end, kept appearing. In it there is the bar scene dialogue, whose context I’d exhaust you if I tried to explain. The last three lines gave me a lot of peace, solace: “But the truth I learned here is, you had to leave because you're you. And the reason I liked you is because you're you. And who you are is someone who leaves.”
You know what I think about life giving you signs (I think you’ll find them. If you look for signs and symbols everywhere, you’re meant to find them.). This phrase is so haunting but embracing. Love as a force that accepts the pieces you can’t change because they are part of you, that may even see those as part of why love exists itself. Or rather, that not every part of you has to be loveable to exist.
I’ve mentioned it lightly once or twice, but there is this aversion I feel when people say I’m ‘kind’ or ‘comforting’. The inner dialogue in my head, the endless struggle to face so many unpleasant emotions and thoughts all the time, the effort I try to put in not hurting others, to not let pessimism and biased beliefs ruin what this life gives me, I’ve somehow deemed that these have made it all less valuable, fake. Have made me a pretender, a nobody wearing shoes that don’t belong to me. At the same time, I’ll sound pompous if I deny what others say, if I relentlessly disagree, if I always have to be the problem kid, I’ll be ungrateful if I can’t accept the grace that is given even if I didn’t ask for any, and whatever made them speak that came from actions or words that are genuine, real. That I meant to do because… I wanted to. There was will.
Does it make any sense? That even if it’s all so muddy and confusing, I try to stay true to myself? Years of pretending in ways that became almost unsusceptible worn me out. You’ll lose even when you change every single bit of yourself, if it’s forced in the moment, it bites away on who you really are. And I’ve always seen love as effort, I can’t see it yet as only a place of rest, to let down your guard, even if when I love something, I feel my heart slow, soften; even if when I love, I’m not convincing myself I’m lucky. If love is a choice, and it isn’t necessarily easy, then it has to at the very least be true. Mean what you say and say what you mean. Trust that the heart within you isn’t evil. Let the parts you may believe are unlovable exist. Try to love them.
I think too much. It is particularly in times of emptiness than I’m grateful for whatever and whoever pulls me out of my own head. My work, my friends, the show or book or song that I’m enamoured with at the moment. Focusing on others helps too. All short term, but baby steps, breadcrumbs in this trail to find my way back to myself. I’ve also been trying to show up, even if I want to hide. There are the obligations you ‘must’ attend to in life, and there is the rest. Say you’re not okay. Admit it to yourself and share it — no, it’s not a burden or self-centered, even if I do feel like I’m casting a spotlight on myself when I do it. Think of this instead as a sign on a road: it’s there to help everyone know how to drive mindfully, to not be careless. You let others know because you care.
I’m 22, turning 23 in less than 6 months, and I honestly feel too grown for this kind of existential crisis, too busy, but here I am. I’m purposeless but I want to give myself, and you too, some leftover hope. What is my reason to be here and do all this? I don’t believe it’s something you find but rather something you’ll build. Similarly to how I’m demotivated to believe you find a place of belonging in this world — you might have to make one with your bare hands. I’m lost in a way that isn’t sad, maybe I’m still holding on to the hope that this won’t last forever. Even seasons pass. I didn’t give you a solution, only confessions and reminders from lessons learned. I should read my own letters to myself sometimes, it’s a bit stupid that I don’t, am I not recycling the same themes? I think I handle these with a lot more heart if I’m writing them to someone else, someone that’s not me, even if I write about myself. Gosh. I sound like a broken record. I think this is enough time with my own thoughts for at least a month…
Thank you for reading delicate this week. Keep yourself warm, I hope the next time I send you a letter it’ll be filled with a lot more joy.
DELICACIES OF THE WEEK
A friend of mine has opened an Instagram to share crochet creations! I’d like to share her account with you. She makes a lot of different things, from clothes to accessories, and looking at those I can only imagine how much time, patience and dedication it takes. She’ll be posting and selling pretty things soon. I don’t mean to sound like a youtuber, but if you’d like, please do leave a follow or a like on her account :)
Throughout writing this letter, I thought of Phoebe’s “I Know the End” multiple times and the many details I love about the song: how she repeats ‘I know’, some with reassurance, some with reluctance, something almost solemn, a forced acceptance; how the words and phrases are so scattered but she manages to make them flow meaninglessly, referencing pop culture or her own songs along the way, dropping double meanings with ease, and how she managed to give the idea of the apocalypse some hope. It takes some genius to write this way, no? I’ll leave you with her video commentary on the song.
‘love is a heavy thing that carries you as much as you carry it’
Do read Andrea Gibson’s full poem here, it might be a new addition to my favorite poems in the world.
SONGS OF THE WEEK: sagu's palm song live at Milton Court, London, 2022 by ichiko aoba, shit talk by sufjan stevens and i know the end by phoebe bridgers
delicate’s spotify playlist! & delicate’s tumblr
anything you’d like to leave anonymously can be sent here xxx