There's a good chance things will always be this way.

Empty.

People fill it with babies. Cars. Computers. God.

Or they don't feel it
or ignore the feeling
of meaninglessness

I'm so empty, and I wish you were here to give me something
to believe in, to work toward, to feel

When I believed in you, I had a reason to go on every day

I hate the weakness in myself that causes me to seek you now
I hate the awareness in myself that makes me feel this when so many others just ...don't

but it's who I am and I feel like I need to own that, particularly since it seems to be all I consistently have

---

And you, the things I do that aren't with you
they're distractions, not passions

maybe I stopped letting myself care, or
maybe I'm just hollow
and the love I think I feel is just an attempt to mask that, to keep from facing it, to keep from being empty even if I fill myself with an overly hopeful lie

If I weren't hollow, this wouldn't be able to fill me
I would be stronger
I would be real

Yes, there are things I would refuse you
I wouldn't give up reading or music or debates or arguments or writing things like this
but you wouldn't ask me to give up those things
so it's a moot point

What would I give up for you?
What do I even possess to be able to give up?
It would be an empty sacrifice, leaving something I don't care about
don't burn for
don't feel passion and longing and joy with
for that which I do
and so what am I supposed to do?

Where can I find my meaning? Where should it be found?

And would I even ask these questions if you loved me? If you validated me finding that worth in you and what we make together?

Why are there some days, so increasingly many, that it's not enough to go through the motions and do what's expected? Why are there so many days that make me feel like my life's being wasted?

And I remember what drew me to you in the first place
a dream
a dream where you gave me meaning
by initiating me into a movement
and pursuing you was the pursuit of that meaning
the embodiment of the hope that something beyond rote day-to-day could be found
with you
(and that's a burden I don't think anyone should have to bear)
(even if I pray he will)
But of course that was a false hope
propagated by the false messiah you came to be
merely in my own head

No one could have met those expectations
not even you, who I still find extraordinary
though I worry that's just my delusion too —
even you have suggested your own good qualities exist primarily in my head
so there's nothing, isn't there
at least I see that
though that doesn't help anything

---

How can I go through each day
barely enduring it
things that I once cared about just new burdens
on my already-taxed resources

everything pales and fades
when you are what's being compared against
and I hate that, because you aren't enough
and would probably never be enough, even if you tried, though I guess I'll never know that since you don't
and I try to identify the source of this weakness —
in my entire gender, or my own personal traumas, or other built-in deficiencies of adaptability or of will, but an explanation is not a solution, and I don't know if, for this weakness, I should be seeking a remedy or a way to accept it.

and I try to convince myself that with a partner in all this I'll have the support I need to find myself
but I think I've made finding the partner into the primary instead of secondary goal
since part of me thinks I can just absorb his goals and passions and loves (like a leach) to keep from having to identify my own

and then there's the worry that no one who will have me will have passions and goals and loves that I think matter, and that I would be proud to call my own, and that after a few years I'd just realize (again) that I had been fooling myself and had almost given up and nothing had gotten any better, except I'd wasted years of a life that is supposed to be precious, and maybe even two lives

---

so I guess the question becomes whether love is all I have to offer, and whether finding a target for the love I know I want to give, would feel fulfilled to give, feel empty without giving, is really enough to justify my entire life. Whether it's, for me, the means to a greater, more awesome, and productive end, or the end itself. And I have no fucking idea and am not even sure the answer would do me any good since either answer, either goal, seems agonizingly unreachable

and I'm still chasing this mythical idea of understanding by another, so I can ask, "What do you think I should do?" and get a useful and informed answer
I still crave being known, so much

and I keep looking for this mystical, transcendent thing that a very large part of me doesn't even believe in,
I think because if I can't find someone else to confirm this reality for me, I'm just a(nother) misunderstood crazy person
of which the world is already full.

You used to be able to cry without laughing. You were proud of the way you'd lived and the decisions you'd made, so when something bad happened (or past bad happenings just seemed excruciatingly present), you were able to lament the impersonal cruelty of random chance with a reasonably clean conscience.

Things are different now. These days, he causes your tears, and your pain mixes with self-scorn for letting it happen. Mixes in vastly unequal proportions, actually — you can hardly feel the heartache under your disgust.

You remember your mother, her sobs behind the bedroom door as she surrendered to the pain of your father's mistreatment. You pitied her then, for letting him continue to hurt her and using love to justify it. You asked her how she could call it love when he gave her so much pain for so long, and you dismissed her weary, complicated answers. You swore you'd never be so stupid.

And for years, you weren't. It probably wasn't that you were smarter then; it's more likely just that no one wonderful had stumbled into your life, gotten close enough to make you care, and then become heartbreakingly, indifferently cruel. You didn't know how hard it is to shut off love; you focused on not awarding it when it was blatantly undeserved. When he made you happy except with his absence, you let the feelings come.

The mistake came later, when he stopped making you happy but you stayed anyway. When he didn't open up or start letting you into his life, and when he said he didn't love you, but you adored him so much you decided to wait and see. And one night, while you were kissing him goodbye, still waiting, you thought, "I love you and am dying." At that moment you recognized the double-edged agony of being with him: enduring both the wounds he inflicted and the shame of staying to receive those blows.

I won't tell you you deserve better — your subsequent behavior would all too quickly expose the lie. All I can say is that you deserve this, because your choices have earned it, and that, you already know. Laughter — bitter, spiteful laughter — comes along with your "why me?" tears, your "poor me" weeping, because you know damn well why. You're your mother's daughter, and you know. With that knowledge, who could help but laugh?

Ha. Ha.

Ha.