{"id":22597,"date":"2017-08-29T19:02:55","date_gmt":"2017-08-30T00:02:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidmcelroy.org\/?p=22597"},"modified":"2022-02-13T13:37:22","modified_gmt":"2022-02-13T19:37:22","slug":"emptiness-can-bring-sudden-panic-that-feels-like-being-stalked-by-fear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=22597","title":{"rendered":"Emptiness can bring panic that feels like being stalked by fear"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It happens when I’m driving. Or when I’m taking a break from work. Or in the split second when I’m waking up.<\/p>\n

It happens a dozen times a day. Maybe more.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a sudden realization that something is wrong —\u00a0but I can\u2019t remember what it is<\/em>. That jolt makes me feel panic, as though there’s some terrible unspoken thing that threatens me — something I just can\u2019t put my finger on. Something I can’t quite pull from my foggy memory.<\/p>\n

The panic is physical. It does something in the center of my chest.<\/p>\n

My heart starts to pound. In a brief instant, I become something like a caged animal ready to strike out at danger. But what is the danger? What is the threat? Why can’t I see it? What can’t I remember?<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s an emptiness. It\u2019s a hunger.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an aching sense of longing for contentment. It\u2019s a dull pain that I\u2019ve become so accustomed to living with that I almost don\u2019t notice — and then the panic returns and I\u2019m painfully aware of the sudden rush of adrenaline and the awful feeling that I have no idea what’s wrong or what to do.<\/p>\n

It feels like someone has died and I’m mourning the loss of a loved one. But no one has died. It feels as if someone has ripped some part of me out and left a gaping hole. But there’s no visible wound.<\/p>\n

I keep coming back to the emptiness.<\/p>\n

And every time it happens, the sense of panic — the sense of being a predator who’s about to become prey — goes away quickly. But the emptiness remains. The hole doesn’t go away.<\/p>\n

My first instinct is to eat. It’s a visceral feeling. The emptiness has to be hunger. Food would soothe me. It would fill the emptiness. My rational brain knows better, but some deeper part — some child-like part that lives beneath the level of my rational self — screams in pain.<\/p>\n

Something inside bargains with me. It begs. It pleads.<\/p>\n

Just give me something — maybe ice cream — and the emptiness will go away.<\/em><\/p>\n

The different parts inside me battle one another. The rational brain tries to be the reasonable executive function that explains to the child-like hurt that ice cream wouldn’t help. But the hurt — the hole, the emptiness, the panic — is so insistent that a part of the rational brain feels like saying, “Well, maybe one more time….”<\/p>\n

The writer\u00a0Edna St. Vincent Millay knew what this felt like. In a private letter, she wrote,\u00a0\u201cWhere you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the play, \u201cNo Exit,\u201d\u00a0Jean-Paul\u00a0Sartre famously wrote, \u201cHell is other people.\u201d But emotional hell can be the absence of someone, too. It can be the absence of love, of understanding — the absence of all those things that humans most desperately need once their basic physical needs are met.<\/p>\n

Food won’t fill that hole. Sex won’t fill it. Recreational drugs such as alcohol won’t fill it.<\/p>\n

Only genuine love and understanding will fill it, but that’s hard to find in emotionally healthy ways. At least for some of us.<\/p>\n

If you’re around me when this panic strikes — and I feel a momentary existential terror and I briefly scream in pain inside without quite knowing why — you won’t know there’s anything wrong. You won’t know anything’s going on. My mask is tightly in place.<\/p>\n

But inside, I’m fighting an exhausting battle. And, lately, it feels as though the emptiness is winning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It happens when I’m driving. Or when I’m taking a break from work. Or in the split second when I’m waking up. It happens a dozen times a day. Maybe more. It\u2019s a sudden realization that something is wrong —\u00a0but I can\u2019t remember what it is. That jolt makes me feel panic, as though there’s Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-5St","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22597"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35907,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22597\/revisions\/35907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}