Sometimes you find that feeling you’ve been craving so long for and it swallows you into a multicolor vortex.
And here you are, spinning out of control in a stream of streaky neon lights.
Or perhaps, even better, you find a substance capable of filling that empty void that’s been weighing in your chest, and you use it.
I’m referring to that abyss in your chest you feel when you are craving connection and you’re told that the magic trick is that you need to be happy alone, that’s when love will find you!
Okay.
At the moment, I feel a little bit like I found one of those metal spray cans that ejects the hard foam, the one builders use under tiles or under flooring boards (I saw it on a video on TikTok). Logically, I took the can and sprayed the S%&t out of it inside that emptiness I have been feeling in my chest filling every inch of the room.
The substance looks a bit like shaving foam but instead it quickly becomes much more voluminous, dense and hard and it filled me up with a cloud of ‘something’.
It’s not the best possible material, it’s stale and I knew from the start it would turn into dust quickly, but it does the trick. I have a few weeks, maybe months, of a sense of ‘pretend’ comfort.
Yes, perhaps I feel a bit as if when He met me, He handed me a can of foam and I quickly filled up that void in my chest that I was trying my best to keep empty in the unforeseen occurrence that the Love of My Life actually decided to show up.
(Don’t worry, I read my own blog, I know it’s highly unlikely.)
Well, here I am my friends, popping the foam back into emptiness, dancing to the notes of ‘I don’t feel like dancing’ inside a multicolor Vortex.
But this time, I’m alone in it, because I was smart enough to physically exit the actual vortex when the entire entrance was plastered with red flags.
So, you might be wondering, how can you still be in the vortex if you’ve actually closed the door?
Well…it’s that f&%ing song, that’s how.
Through the song he sent me.
I walk down the street, I play the song.
I go to work, I play the song.
I get on a flight, I dive into the song.
I close my eyes — I can still hear the song.
And every single time I hear those lyrics about how our souls once in a while open up and are able to be fully vulnerable and find themselves together, well, I smile and I recover my mental snapshots of him smiling on my living room chair at breakfast and snack on them. I snack on those snapshots like the crispy croissants he brought over in the morning, savoring every single bite.
A bite for his dimple when he smiles.
A bite for my face on his chest while he’s talking and laughing non stop.
A bite for the look of panic in his eyes when he realized he was feeling too much or that he was more vulnerable than he would have expected.
In my mind I smile and jump back into his arms in front of my kitchen, when he told me to take a mental picture of us, right then and there.
I can’t fault him. He was wonderful with me. He was honest, direct, sweet, vulnerable, funny, present to the right extent, coherent with his actions and very respectful towards me and towards my emotions.
I am grateful that for once, despite the crappy experience of having found yet another man who will not end up with me, he actually handled the whole situation with a dignified level of grace.
Lessons from my therapist: there is a reason you’re meeting and giving a chance to the wrong guys
According to my therapist, you only end up in these kinds of situations if you’re still lacking self esteem. Why would you ever get stuck in a situation with an emotionally unavailable man?
What would prompt you to get attached to someone who has practically none of the criteria’s of the man you say you are looking for? aka — available, loyal, ready for what you want and need…
Perhaps I still have work to do on myself however I cannot help but wonder, how much work do we really need to put in our own self development to truly find a way our of our toxic patterns?
I’ve been thinking long and hard: why did I even like him in the first place?
That is until a friend shared a piece of wisdom I can’t hold back from you:
I want him because I think it’s special that he fell for me when normally he just has random sex with random people.
He’s crazy about me because I made him feel like the one special person who gets me, the woman who would never consider a one night stand, let alone a married man (open as their relationship may be).
What we both fell for is the feeling of being the special, not so much for the other person.
If I remove the special element, what do I actually like about him?
I must admit there are a few things I really do like but so many crucial things are missing…his availability to name one.
So here I am, missing a feeling.
A feeling that temporarily filled my void.
That feeling of being in the arms of a tall, smart, witty, open, vulnerable, sexual, unavailable man who, for just an instant, made me feel special, like I was the most incredible woman on the face of the planet, true or false as that may have been.
It’s okay to still feel, even when you know you shouldn’t.
I guess if there is one thing I have learned over the years is that it’s okay to experience things, to step into that feeling, however we can’t just stop and wallow there, instead we need to keep on walking towards what is hopefully something better, a love meant for us. Towards the light, at the end of the freaking tunnel.
And yes, we must keep on walking even when deep inside us we know the light may not be at the end of this specific tunnel. Perhaps it will be at the end of the next one.
And so you wait for the foam to erode, day after day. You wait for the volume to decrease and when you get lonely you try checking if there is a little bit more foam in the can because that song, as meaningless as it may seem to anyone who isn’t us, that song alone can fill up my void for a few hours each time I play it.
That foam can save us from that ungrateful task of turning our own void from emptiness into a cozy room, with books to read and friends to hang out with until the Love of Your Life decides they are finally ready to join you.
All of a sudden, the void feels full and it completely disappears from your thoughts.
But even when you find love and you don’t feel it as much, the void is there.
Each time you wait for a message and it doesn’t arrive you can hear the foam bubbles popping, and even if it was just foam, and you knew this from the beginning, you were happily getting intoxicated by the fumes of being, for a little while, held.
And let’s face it, we all need to be held once in a while.
I know it’s up to us to dress up that void and turn it into a beautiful penthouse.
I know happiness is an inside job.
I know I can’t outsource any of this, however if, like me, you’re just feeling it, remember the number one rule to get to any destination you wish: keep on walking.
With much love from my void to yours, A.
—
This post was previously published on medium.com.
Love relationships? We promise to have a good one with your inbox.
Subcribe to get 3x weekly dating and relationship advice.
Did you know? We have 8 publications on Medium. Join us there!
***
–
Photo credit: Giorgio Trovato On Unsplash
