I don’t know what this is, but the writing makes me feel better.

What if we spent every moment of our lives awake thinking of only one thing? Just one special thing we contribute our entire beings to. It could be your job, your kids, your friends, your lover. It could be helping others, or helping yourself.

I spent every moment of my life on just one thing. Just one special thing I contributed my entire being to. It gave me purpose. It gave me bliss. It felt good, and I felt whole and uncomplicated. Wholly uncomplicated.

What if we lost our thing? Suddenly, the cornerstone of our entire being is lost. An irreplaceable void appears in ourselves. You lose your job, your kids, your friends, your lover. Your community hates you, or you lose all you’d struggled to gain.

What would you do, if a hole you could neither ignore nor escape opened up within you? Something core to your identity suddenly escapes you. Something that defined “you” was missing. Who are “you” when you lose what makes it true?

How do you cope with the feeling of loss? How do you feel when you lose and can’t cope? In the end it’s the same, we die from it or we survive from it. There’s no beginning nor end to the loss. There’s no beginning nor end to the recovery.

What is recovery? What’s it mean to recover? To gain again that which we once had? Or is it to fill in a hole with something new? If you lose “you” and what makes that true, then maybe you’ll begin again at the end anew.

We fill a hole that once was burrowed, deep in the crevice of your soul. The material is new, or maybe borrowed, but either way gives you control. We fill ourselves with hobbies and activities and platitudes, but at the same time, we don’t have the latitude to find ourselves again when we feel so stranded. But if we don’t find it, we’ll be empty handed.

I don’t think the end or the beginning will match. I think the journey too is something that’ll never truly end. We par our lives out in sequences and stories, but what we recollect is nothing more than a simplification.

I don’t know what it means to hurt. But I know what it’s like to be hurt.

I don’t know what it means to be sad. But I know what it’s like to be sad.

I don’t think that I’ll ever find a true replacement for that which I’ve lost. But I think I prefer it that way.

To suffer is proof you have lost. But to have lost means you once had something to lose. And eventually I’ll find something new to be found. And I’ll find a new “me” from the pain I’ve faced.

We’re all phoenixes rising from the ashes, with each trauma birthing a new “us” who reconnects. Each time we suffer, we find something we can’t replace. Each time we recover, we find something worth losing.

Some tragedies are truly great. Some are truly minor. But all are ones through which we’ll discover, this new person just waiting to be real, a “me” that’s not me, so that they can feel.