A Hole in the Chest

Summary: Depression, anxiety, and finding meaning | Word Count: 768

Since the early days, when I understood myself to be me and where permanent memories had started to crystalize, there has been a hole in my chest for reasons unknown. I can only guess that I was born unlucky and in the days ahead of current time that the same sporadic and feeling of incompleteness will fester within the folds of my mind, leaving me at the end of the day with an incomprehensible gap.

“As above, so below.”

How fundamental is this adage that speaks of a divine mirror dividing realities from Heavens to Earths all things are alike. The infinitely small and the infinitely large are also like the direction of the arrow of time. The present is both past and future simultaneously, while the presence of light means the presence of both forever more. I am tangled with this darkness even within the light and it can not be undone. For there can be no form of a shadow without light. The universe I assume works on cycles of stability and upheaval, while not all things are of the same proportion, there is a give and take, an equal and opposite reaction, therefore peace comes with struggle.

“As above, so below.”

This hole exists as a void of nothingness that flows into me as the essence of myself is stolen, consumed and destroyed by it. The future is but the past reoccurring with different sets of steps and I must continue to fight against the darkness of this hole if I am to exist.

If the self is a self referring process, continuous and growing with each new moment of sensory and complex thought adding to itself as being one thing, then I am bound to always be a creature with an ache.

To the contrary the mind may seem like a single thing of itself, yet for me it is “being” experienced as one from an infinite amount of streams in constant flux. I understand pain and joy well, two sides of a whole, yet looking too close at myself will give too many doubts at what is actually there, certainty escapes reason.

Years deep into a never ending well of strange shadows gazing, wishing for the light above gives me the entitled me to the foresight that stream of consciousness taps into the uncanny of being – it needs no drugs or altered states for what madness is created. Those are the consequential thoughts for being alive. It would be best to avoid too much concentration on delightful babble, opaque in distance meaning it creates only distractions from balanced clarity in life. Explanation of feelings will always be hard to describe; A catharsis is for the one doing the cartharting, rather the one hearing it.

The pain I feel is not in the chest itself despite saying it’s my heart, however no word or phrase echoes the same sentiment. The feeling of a “bottomless hole” in me is impossible to convey to others; nothing good can be said when the mind is drenched with fog. I drift through it so carelessly along a trail of inadequate words floating above losing meaning as it is pushed out my mouth. Pain as an experience is subjective and slippery to measure with a true scale and are clouded in memories and thoughts, but the signals of pain are felt as real, we know they are there.

My pain exists in my center; not in the heart, but in the abdomen, right below the diaphragm in my gut. A punch in the gut no fist can hope to match unless their impact can separate the mind from the body and the air from the sky.

I am the victim of my own self sometimes, but also the hero. The powers beyond me are entangled in a world that is tough to change. My story is the character and the narrator who are the same. I am the sovereign of thought and slave to my will. I undertake this introspective journey as all my electrons crackling about in time that carries my flesh and blood forward to a fearful future. To live is to declare victory over time that has been lived with light of hope. To die is to be celebrated by others who remembered you for a job well done. A hole in my heart means something is missing and that which is missing is lost. My vision, my goal is find that which is needed no matter the untouchable feelings taking hold of my focus. That is what it is like having a hole in the chest.