Pockets of Emptiness

I quit my job. This has been one of the reasons for my misery and silence. You see, I don’t grieve like most people. I don’t cry or go on a drinking spree. I don’t get really mad or really sad. Instead, I enter what I call pockets of emptiness, where I am nothingness. In these pockets, there is no love, joy, hope, or sadness. There is only darkness, encompassing a feeling of helplessness. The person I want to be feels impossible. Breathing is hard work, and so is being.

But life rarely gives us what we want; that is our job. The job of life is to give us what we need, and I needed joblessness. Even though I didn’t know it at the time, I needed to grieve — seriously grieve — the constant loss and change in my life, including the loss of self. I have changed so much; I am not the person I was last year. I have learned so much.

I needed to stop running, to stop being in the race. In a capitalistic world, that meant stopping making a living because I was drowning and suffering. Every day had started being a new day of learning and adventure but a prison — one I did not desire to live in anymore.

I have a confession to make. In my lack of knowledge and understanding of the way I am, the way I grieve, I was unkind to myself. I called myself lazy, worthless, and dumb, all because I didn’t understand that I was in an emotional crash and in pain. Pain that would soon fade. Emptiness that would soon be filled with love and a compelling need to create, to live, to chase after knowledge. For this is truly my purpose in life: to know more about different things, to do more in different areas, and to teach what I have learned, even if it seems irrelevant in that moment.

I am this and a lot more, but I forget this in the pockets of emptiness. The person I am feels like noise, just noise. But again, life gives us what we need, not just what we want, because sometimes what we need is so painful we are unable to give it to ourselves.

But I will say this: my act of courage, one I should have held on to, was that I had the courage to change. The courage to walk away and not continue to beg. Someone once told me to never beg, so I didn’t. I left with my dignity intact, on my own terms. And that, to me, is pretty dope. I am sure the past me would be holding a celebration now.

But the thing I will end with is this: know thyself, know thyself. And if you don’t know yet, just be silent. Let your heart speak. Then listen. Really listen.