Holes
I have a very talented artist friend who is lost.
It happens. While the kids are growing up, most people don't have time to feel lost. Then the kids leave and they have too much time to think. Every time they think--far too often--about being lost, it gets heavier.
My friend believes a hole is inside her and she doesn't know how to fill it. It's gotten to the point where she doesn't want to do anything without a guarantee it will fill the hole. Dating, pets, art. Everything must be in service of the hole.
By her definition, everything she's tried has failed.
There are many ways you could describe this situation, but I see it as a failure of language.
We all have emptiness inside us. Calling it a hole, though, carries with it an implication. Holes can be filled. They can be made to disappear.
I felt like that for many, many years. I always saw what I called the hole as a huge obstacle in my life, a foe to be defeated. What else can you do with a hole? You fill it. I couldn't feel complete until it was done, so I always felt incomplete.
I don't know when I started to change.
Over time, I began to realize me that what was inside me wasn't a hole. It wasn't a foe. I was more like a car where the brakes were shitty and you had to pop the clutch to get the motor in gear. More important than the car's faults, though, was that it ran. It always ran.
The analogy is seriously flawed because if I was a car I should be able to put myself into the shop and fix everything. That's okay, though, because the analogy still runs, just like the car.
Thinking about life, and myself, like in this manner changed my happiness in profound ways. I don't expect to be happy every day, and when I am, I appreciate it more.
That's what my life will always be and it's okay.
This isn't what my friend wants to hear. She wants answers, and she wants the hole filled. Accepting that what you're dealing with isn't a hole, though, is oddly freeing.
At least for me.
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