Suffering from the void

How do you feel today?

Quite empty.

... is the response I give in my head right before I say out loud "yeah good". In a way I think it's only because saying it out loud would be hugely underwhelming.

I don't think anybody would care, because feeling quite empty is not the same as feeling quite depressed, utterly sad, shattered or completely broken. Feeling quite empty actually sounds fine, it's much a muchness you might think. However, I often contemplate that it is much worse than feeling down. The feeling of being empty is a kin to nothingness, a common symptom of suffering from the void.

In the (sometimes) comfortable milieu of existing with depression, feeling quite empty is as destructive a feeling as any other destructive feeling that might arise through the course of a year. With the void existing entirely inside of you, strolling into oncoming traffic means nothing. Like walking out to sea. Like climbing over the barriers of a multi storey carpark and disappearing over the edge or simply slipping gently under the water of your bath, never coming back for another gasp of air.

The problem with feeling quite empty is that there is nothing that fills you. No thought, no feeling, no barometer of sensibility, no care, no urgency, no tenderness, no reason for breathing. There is no white or black, left or right, right or wrong. With no consensus as to what happiness, or indeed sadness, is. You have no reference point for your feelings. No pin. No steer. So you move through the world in vacuum-sealed  state of temporary nothingness. Each interaction you have with another human being becomes a forged re-staging of how you remember an interaction similar to this going, maybe earlier in the week.

It's very awkward and badly re-enacted.

You could see something hilarious and not laugh a single bit, or you could pour petrol over a box of weeping kittens waiting for the spark to light, blank face, expressionless stare... But don't worry, you will laugh because you'll remember that you've laughed at this before, and you won't pour petrol onto the heads of little kittens because you'll remember a version of something like this and regard it as evil, but even still... you could if you wanted to. Because suddenly you've remembered that everything is controllable if nothing really matters, and even if it isn't, you really do not care, so you begin to run the bath/climb the stairs/head for the motorway/enter the ocean bare...

NOTE:

To identify your suffering (although you wont really feel any sense of suffering yourself) look out for the hallow chest, the cavity in your stomach, and the emptiness inside your head.

All are symptoms of suffering from the void, my friend.