"An absence of tears is not the same as an absence of feeling." Okay, so this is a bastardized quote by me! It is bastardized because the quote I was looking at was: "But the absence of tears wasn't the same as an absence of feeling." They are very close, so I will give credit to Lisa Kleypas for this one. Lisa is a best-selling author of romance novels. I have never read any of her work, it is not really a genre I follow. Even so, her quote inspired my thought.
The above quote sort of fits my mood over the past few days. This mood hits me every once in a while, particularly around the holidays. It's a feeling of not really sadness but emptiness. For me, absence is as much an emotional state as sad or happy. In fact, absence to me is like the lack of any real emotion. I am not happy, sad, satisfied, or unsatisfied. I'm not angry, frustrated, optimistic, or pessimistic. In fact, it just seems that everything is gray. Nothing is good enough or bad enough to elicit a response. Three things seem to drive this feeling in me. First and foremost, things that remind me about my wife. Sometimes, I just can't seem to get past that she is dead and that I won't be seeing her again. I'll hear something that reminds me of her, or smell something. Sometimes it's just a memory or something that I remember seeing with her. The holidays also seem to drive this feeling in me. At times, I feel joyless and just want to hide. I want my daughters to enjoy the holidays and have a good time... and I try to make sure they do so. But oftentimes, underneath my veneer of mirth and joy, I feel empty. It is far worse than feeling sad. Finally, the last thing that makes me feel absence is when I am not actively working towards my goals. Oftentimes, I will bury myself with projects when I am in absence mode to keep myself too busy to think. I will work on a number of goals all at once so that no one feels neglected or excluded. It's at these times that I need everyone I love to be involved for at least a little while each week. Time to spend with my family helps me to slowly kill the absence that I feel inside. Things to do, memories to make... Talks of inconsequential things, all of these are some of my favorite things! Am I nuts? Who knows. Do you experience the emotion I call absence? If so, how do you beat it? Leave me a comment if you have any ideas, because it really does suck.
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