Some Emptiness

Do you know what it feels like when everything inside you feels hollow? Can you fathom how much that emptiness burns within your chest when someone special is no longer there? Do you too feel such anguish? The person who was once right there before you, who laughed at your amusing stories, who talked with you — now you no longer meet, no longer speak. Is it easy to accept? Life changes so many things, takes people far away, brings others closer.

Do you know when an even worse state sets in? When that person becomes a memory. When the moments you spent together become memories. You desperately want to share something, but there's no one to listen. A song moved you so deeply, yet you cannot tell them about it! You long to talk with them about your favorite scenes or characters from a film, but there's nothing you can do.

The room you could enter freely whenever you wished — today its door is closed to you. Can you imagine how painful that is? This emptiness, this helplessness slowly destroys a person.

Most of us spend our lives thinking of someone else. They live their entire lives as shadows of that person! Imagine how much it hurts to have to live without the very person you were meant to live with! People endure such torments and still live, but they cannot fully live — they exist with only half their life force!

Say the person who would light up when you sang, whose praise you wait to hear — when that person vanishes from your life, can you still feel like singing with the same joy? When the one for whom you lived, for whom you did the things you loved, disappears — how does one continue living! It truly becomes so hard to live, so difficult to make sense of life.

The sad truth is, those we love hurt us the most. And we do the same to them. If people didn't keep love or give it, they wouldn't suffer, nor could they cause suffering. At day's end, the sorrowful spend sleepless nights. Again and again they think, oh, if only everything could be as it was before! If only that person would return! If they were in my life right now, how much more beautiful life would be!

People think, people cry, people eventually forget; and if they don't forget, they pretend to forget. People must force themselves to forget, even if through acting, even if by force. Being able to feel love is more important than having the person you love. Being able to stay alive is more important than being able to feel love.