Dear nycartis:

You wrote “this feeling, this Lack or Void has always been with me.. a dark hole that can never be filled“- this Lack, Void, dark hole that can never be filled-  it has been with me too and it’s been with lots and lots of people. I want to work on my own Lack-Void-dark hole that can never be filled (I’ll refer to it as Lack, the 1st word you used, and the only one of the boldfaced above that you used more than once, a total of 4 times) this morning, using your posts to help me with my personal work. I hope that as I develop this post, it will help you too. First, I will research your Lack, then I will look deeper into my own.

The title of your thread characterizes the Lack very well: “Feeling Down/ Like  No One Cares“. Words in the title of your previous posts also fit this Void as well: “Fear… not coping.. Struggling.. haunted… Anxiety“.

You wrote yesterday: “Even now that I have a loving husband, ‘lots of friends’, and a daughter, and now finally a very attentive mom, nothing can fill it”- your focus when it comes to the Lack has been your “friends”. You chose quotation marks around the word because there is a mismatch between your expectations in regard to friends and the  reality you experienced  in regard to friends.

“Sometimes it scares me a little. I know I would never do anything drastic, like take my life or anything“- this Lack is so distressing at times that a person feels desperate enough to end that distress any which way, whatever it takes.

“I spend way too much time thinking about the Lack. In this instance, the friends who didn’t come, and not the ones who did (or the fun time I had with my husband and daughter celebrating separately). My mind reverts quite naturally to the Lack“- the Lack is so distressing at times that it demands all our attention and all of our thinking. It takes priority over anything else.

“I have been living with this Lack, like an elephant in the room for a very long time“- this Lack is as big as an elephant in a room. It is not a minor lack, its indeed a LACK.

“This birthday just sort of shone a light on it, but it is there all the time“- we feel the Lack more intensely times than in other times, but it is always, there, the elephant in the room.

“I think you are on to something that this has a whole lot to do with my childhood“- I read and re-read what you shared about your childhood before, but not with the Lack being on my mind. I want to look for the Lack in what you previously shared. I will try to not make it very long:

“My family is very small… I was ALWAYS the peacekeeper” (March 2019): you were always the peacekeeper because there was no peace for you as a child, in the context of your family.

On October 11, 2020, you submitted your one and only happy thread titled “A Happy Post/Gratitude“: “My daughter spends more time with my husband’s family and is very bonded and comfortable with all of them. I’m thrilled because, in the last week or so, she has finally bonded with my mom!! Today we spent the day together and the two of them were just talking, and walking my mom’s dogs at a park, and it was as if they were old buddies, so comfortable. I kind of stepped back a bit and let the moment last as long as it needed to. It filled my heart so much… to see this new connection of love forming makes my heart so happy… Today is a day I won’t ever forget… my daughter really enjoys being with her“.

In the same thread, you wrote: “My mom..  has exposed me to a LOT of pain“.

Your mother exposed you to a LOT of pain, which took away so much from the child that you were: it took away a LOT of your peace of mind and heart (and therefore you became “ALWAYS the peacekeeper”). Your bond with your mother was terribly interrupted, your feelings of comfort with her was terribly gone. You were so-uncomfortable- the opposite of “so comfortable”). Your heart was so-much empty, and seeing your daughter and mother filled your heart “so much”.

“It filled my heart so much“, you wrote on Oct 11, 2020. Yesterday, July 17, 2020, you wrote that you have “a dark hole that can never be filled“. The image of your daughter and mother did not fill your heart for long. All that was filled on that day was gone some time later.

On the same thread, you shared: ” in truth I’m so weak and timid because of this gnawing fear that I’ll have someone mad at me, or someone cut me out of their life and cast me aside. It’s something I’m struggling with very much and am actually in therapy to try to resolve” (Oct 12, 2020): I noticed this gnawing fear in your various threads in regard to your friends.

The day after, Oct 13, 2020, you wrote: “My husband, thank goodness, is such an amazing person… so different than many of the people I grew up with. He’s decent, respectful, and loves me, and reliable… But this issue of mine baffles him. He can’t understand why I refuse to let go of some friendships or even family relationships that are definitely toxic“- I think that the reason you focus on unreliable friends is because the shape of your Lack/ “dark hole” is such that it cannot be filled by an amazing, decent, respectful, loving and reliable person like your husband. It can only be filled- so the Lack’s intuition goes- it can only be filled by the person/s who created it. Or people similar to the people who created it: non-amazing, indecent, disrespectful, unloving, unreliable, definitely toxic.

I don’t think that it is possible (for you, for me, for anyone) to convince the Lack to be filled by what it is not designed to be filled with. I think that it is not possible to fill it with anything at all. It will always remain empty, and the only possibility is to shrink it. All the efforts to fill it end in emptiness and a continued desire to fill it, a desire doomed to be frustrated again and again, forevermore.

There are euphoric feelings that accompany the images of/ thoughts about filling Lack, such as you experienced in your Happy Post. But these euphoric, happy feelings are deceiving because they cannot lead to success. They in fact lead to failure and misery.

– to be continued later. If you’d like to react to what I posted so far, nycartist. Otherwise, I would like to return to your thread in hours from now.

anita