Emptiness

Sometimes emptiness is so heavy it feels like its own substance. As if the hollowness of this absence is a weight your heart could never bear, an oppressive burden you seek to extract. Emptiness is not merely a void; it is far less abstract. There is no emptiness. Where loss leaves a space, it is soon filled with less than favorable emotions. Grief. Sorrow. Loneliness. Guilt. Regret. Longing. Saudade. Each a full, individual feeling, attempting to occupy the same empty space at the same time as each of the others, and no matter how large that space is, it can never hold them all, and every other space in your being is infiltrated by a conglomerate of emotions no one has yet learned how to entirely successfully deal with. No matter how much knowledge or experience we acquire, no matter how much we observe this affect, we will never conquer our fear of emptiness, or rather, our fear of overwhelming amounts of varied intense sentiments

Caring Again

I could never stop caring. Even when I want to, my heart burns inside of me with the pain of those around me. Even when I want to believe that I could focus on my own pain, my own problems, I still feel what they feel. I know I’m not literally feeling it. But I cannot help but imagine what they are feeling, to want to do something about it, even in situations when I can’t.

I remember the time I killed a spider. I do it all the time and I never think twice. But there was this one time. I let it live in my window for a month and a half until it got cold. At first it would run away when I would open or close the window, but gradually it got used to me. I had never hurt it, so it just stayed still. I became afraid that it would come all the way inside as it grew colder, I guess. But what could it really have done? But out of my concern for myself, I killed it. And it sat there and let me. It knew all that time I wouldn’t hurt it because I never had. And then I did. Worse than that, I killed it. And it didn’t even move an inch when I came in with a tissue to end its life.

That may seem petty to you. Ridiculous that I would even care about something that stupid and small. But I can’t help but feel as though I betrayed something. I let my concern for myself override my compassion for others, and that one instance has bothered me for the last three years. It doesn’t mean I never kill spiders. It just means I don’t let them trust me and then kill them, and if I can avoid killing them, I do.

You might think I’m one of those crazy people who is all for not killing anything at all under any circumstance. But stay with me for a minute.

As I drove home today from school, I had a lot weighing on my mind. But I tried not to let it undermine my happiness about my graduation. And then I saw this deer. It had been hit by a car and was still in the road. But as I passed, I saw it move. Its breath steamed in the cold air. It was still alive. Just lying there, waiting to be hit again at the bottom of a hill. I did everything I could think to do, and the man who had hit it came back to end its life. I was just glad it wouldn’t have to suffer anymore.

I could have kept driving. I could have thought, I’m not equipped to do anything in this situation, so I don’t need to try. I could have said that it wasn’t worth it or I could have ignored it in order to continue focusing on my attempt to remain happy. But I couldn’t do that. How could I put my own happiness before something like that? It didn’t even enter my mind.

I am moved by compassion regularly. People tell me it makes me a good person. But does that really define a good person? Shouldn’t people just feel that way anyway? But I get caught up on things just as much as other people. It isn’t till it’s staring me in the face, just like tonight, that I am moved enough to act.

It bothers me that I let things pass so often that I could have prevented or at the very least helped with. And it bothers me that it can be so easy to just ignore the suffering in the world. It bothers me most during the times that I find myself unable to ignore it. When I feel so strongly about something that I can’t let it pass. Because I don’t know why I can at other times. And I don’t know how people can every day. How can we pass something or someone suffering and do nothing or think that we can’t or shouldn’t help? I can’t understand the feeling. And yet I feel it in myself. Sometimes I want that. Sometimes I don’t want to have to deal with the death and suffering this world throws at us, as though if I ignore it, it’s not really there because I am not thinking about it. But I simply don’t have that option.

Death is a part of this world. Suffering is a part of this world. Pain is a part of this world. That’s the reality of it. And if that’s reality, then isn’t there anything we can do about it, that we should do about it? Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like as people who say we follow God, we should be willing to put ourselves aside a little more often for the sake of those around us to alleviate the suffering we see in the world. Or at the very least to not add to it.

Lost in Emotion

Sometimes I think of childhood, lost, and I cry;

I think of the long days all gone by –

It seems too short to say goodbye.

Sometimes I feel like I am young once more;

I cry about small things like when I was four –

It shakes me up to my very core.

Sometimes I have feelings with which I cannot relate;

Feelings of sadness, happiness, come too late –

Feelings like memories, lost, this I hate.

Sometimes I cannot comprehend what I feel;

I wonder at times if it ever was real –

Yet the memories, lost, disallow me to heal.

Sometimes I desire to reach back in the past;

Yet it is not as though I want those feelings to last –

I merely wish it didn’t pass by so fast.

Sometimes I want to remember the feeling I felt;

It comes to the surface like an untimely welt –

My heart, reason unknown, begins to melt.

Sometimes I ponder whether all feel this way;

If we all wonder why the feelings don’t stay –

If all have the feelings that don’t go away.

Sometimes I consider myself one of a kind;

No one else has to ponder as much in their mind –

No one else has to search in order to find.

Sometimes I believe no one ever could understand;

That often even I find it difficult to stand –

That when I’m lost in emotion I just need a hand.

[An Imagination Growing Cold]

An imagination growing cold,

Possessing no dream or lasting hope.

I have fallen for a deeper trope:

New words proclaiming meanings old.

Imagination believed the claim,

Embellishing where falling short,

Yet never dreaming it of the sort

Of which to say, "It came

And went; no lasting dreams,

A fading hope already spent."

A feeling borrowed, or rather, lent:

The price, my heart torn at the seams.

Destroyed by words designed to rend;

The power of syllables deeply felt:

To lock a heart or defenses melt.

Some phrases spoken are hard to mend.

I search still deeper in my heart

And find I still cannot believe

The words that pierce my heart and cleave

That beating organ part from part.

I will not say, "It came and went;

No lasting dream, a fading hope,

No meaning beyond a simple trope."

I will not say, "Already spent."

Dreams growing cold: a dying ember

Ignites my soul; it lights my mind;

It forces me to look behind.

It tells me softly to remember.

1/14

Words

I let them destroy me.

The forces of words that come against me

Are met with the breaking of my heart.

I reply with tears instead of words.

I send out similar words at various times,

Never thinking of consequences.

At least others stand against them

And do not show outward signs

That words have crippled them,

If they do.

My defenses break.

I cannot stand against the torrents.

If I was stronger, I could conceal it.

If I was wiser, it would not be necessary.

Surely it is not with wisdom that I

Throw down the guards of my heart

To be so affected by a few syllables

Of speech.

What knowledge is there

That would convey to me that I should

Allow words to render me useless,

To render me empty?

What wisdom would advise me

To allow my emotions to reign over me,

Thereby allowing words to do so?

None I have ever heard of before,

And none shall I ever.

 10-7-13

Expression

This is kind of raw. And the rhyming is strange. But whatever.

Impossible to tell how I feel

Yet I know that it is real

The way of how I am

The story if my life

My heart with a broken seal

Yet I know that it is real

How often I can’t express

Go and put me to the test

I’ll know not what to say

They fail me every time

The words mean less and less

They only make a mess

My heart holds much

It holds to it, as such

I want to say what I mean

It is as though I don’t

My heart’s strong clutch

My secrets no one will touch

Yet secrets are not what I desire

This feeling is burning like a fire

I know it is known and not

My heart does not fully tell

My heart: deceptive, a liar

I want to tell how much I admire

Admiration is not the extent

The love from my heart was not merely lent

The way I feel is never fully stated

I wish it could be read and known

I wish they were words in a letter sent

I wish you knew it will never be spent