Hole be Whole

Although this is the first time I've spelled it out, I've wondered it for a year.

Why hasn't anyone called on me to see how I am?

I've been on a rooftop, howling in pain for awhile now, and I'm still alone.

I fucking love this planet.

Incite

I may appear to be an idiot.  

I'm not.  I've done what 

I've done

for a reason.  Part of learning to be an outcast is the examination of what cast you out.  From the fringe, you hear what people complain about, what they struggle to understand.  From the fringe, you see the contradiction of behavior.  It is often enough to abandon the draw that beckons your return.

The hole I've been staring into, the one in the middle of me, is the hole the crowd scrambles to keep hidden beneath blankets, and tarps, in the sanitized world around them.  The effort is tragically funny, and grossly flawed.

The hole speaks to all of us on a daily basis.  It speaks through the evening news, and it's routine coverage of community misfortune.  It speaks again later, on the nightly news, where it provides examples of suffering, and loss, on a global scale. 

It speaks to us from India, through a man who falls into a tiger enclosure, and is killed as onlookers watch helplessly.  It speaks to us from 30,000 feet in the air, now 25,000 feet, now just 20, as a plane full of exchange students spends their final ten minutes alive in a free fall, as the Co-Pilot breathes audibly, and calmly, into the black box. His coordinates for the auto-pilot are locked, and entered, aimed somewhere directly beneath the wings, straight down.

It speaks to us on late night infomercials for addiction centers, and cancer treatment facilities.  It speaks to us from a video camera mounted in a patrol car, and through the collapsed figure of an officer in the weeds, and a Pinto that is doing it's best to get out of sight with the uninsured gunman.  It speaks to us through the drawn shades of the family whose teenage son died yesterday, in a freak accident.

It talks to us, and we listen.  
We hear it, even if we wish we

didn't.  And we orchestrate our communal lives around a false busyness that excuses us from involvement.  You can deny it, of course. But my desperate need to establish eye contact with anyone, and the fact that I haven't been able to, gives you away.  

I'm fine just listening now, to the emptiness, and to the denial required for living.  

"Oh, can you believe that?  I just heard, and it's sooo sad.  Can you imagine?  But I DO have to say, I'm conscientious of those things.  I always wear my seat belt, drive the speed limit, take a multivitamin, get my teeth cleaned, attend church, volunteer with needy people, wear sunscreen, practice yoga, call my mother, never swear, sleep eight hours, meditate, tip my gardener, practice fidelity, sip my alcohol, and watch G-movies." 

"Of course, Dear.  I do the same. Plus keep my fingers crossed that it's not me, and silently pray it happens to someone more deserving.  I even downloaded a very sweet greeting for my phone, to welcome the the requests of despair to voicemail.  BEEP!"   

It's okay.  I've done the same.

There are things the eye refuses.  

This time, however, the hole opened up inside me.  

In Sight

I understand it now.  I feel it for real.  It's not  pleasant to have emptiness take you over.  Even less so when no one makes an attempt to help fill it.  

I never learn what I think I'll learn, when I make a confident move toward it.

We all know what empty is.  It talks to us through ten-thousand voices a minute, serenading through Ipods, and satellite radios, and acoustic guitars, and lyrics that want to know if if you can help theeeeem, or heeeeear theeeeem, and if you can, then why are we soooooooooo alooooone.

We hear the hole.

We do our best to ignore it, and we do,
until the day it finds us. 

We ignore it until we can't, and there it is, staring us down in the ring, and waving us out of the corner.

Insight

You were right not to come.  That was never my hope, or intention. I don't think I would have either, and that bothers me.

Why do most of us wait until the terror subsides before we ask what can be done?  Why do we bake a casserole, hand it off at the front door, and insist the reason we're running off is to ensure you get the rest you need?

I've been questioning whether it's actually death that scares me. The hole that appeared made a convincing argument that it may not be, that I might even want it.  The fact that I can say that is proof I'm a liar.

What I'm afraid of, is caring.  I'm afraid that the next time I choose to may leave me with nothing, when I'm asked to care enough to let go.  

There's more proof that I'm a liar.  

The hole that filled me, filled me with nothing.  
The hole that's left after the loss of what's loved is the promise love made to never leave.  It's the space you'll need to hold it.

Natalie Merchant  'Break Your Heart'

3 Doors Down  'Kryptonite'