Anything to fill the void
I had a disturbing dream last night.
I’ve felt lately that there is something inside me, some hidden thing buried deep in my subconscious. Whatever it is, it’s festering like a parasite in my psyche, poisoning every good thing it touches.
Maybe it’s not that I can’t find it. Maybe I’m too afraid to look.
Before I share my dream, some context.
I fixate on things. The way a shark fixates on a blood trail in the depths of the ocean. The way a bloodhound fixates on a scent in an old-growth forest.
My whole life I’ve been an obsessive person, whether it’s some lofty goal or creative endeavor, a girlfriend or a substance, sometimes both.
There was a time when I called this obsession drive, prided myself on my “ambition,” patting myself on the back while I wasted away, devoting myself entirely to projects and people while the rest of my life fell by the wayside.
This compulsion drains the joy out of everything I do, reducing my life to a vivid painting that’s slowly losing its color.
I’ve driven away partners I loved because my love language was suffocation.
((People who didn’t ask me to live exclusively for their benefit.
Who came to resent me for trying to anyway.))
(I make myself an impossible person to love, because my brand of love is corrosive.
I am corrosive.)
(I love writing. But every time I sit down to write I do so with the expectation that my future is on the line. It’s turned my passion into something I dread even thinking about.)
I almost never even notice I’m doing it until I’ve ruined something beautiful.
Something I love too much.
(I make myself an impossible person to love, because my brand of love is corrosive.
I am corrosive.)
(I love writing. But every time I sit down to write I do so with the expectation that my future is on the line. It’s turned my passion into something I dread even thinking about.)
The worst part is that I never mean to. I just want things so badly they consume me. Money. Success. Recognition. Human touch. But the harder I strain to reach them, the further I push them all away.
I wonder, as an adult, what happened to me as a child to make me such a goddamn mess today.
(I don’t have to think too hard.) My dad died when I was five. I practically worshipped the ground he walked on. I think when he didn’t come back from deployment, something snapped, some invisible “Do Not Touch” switch flipped in my brain.
I’ve been looking for something (or someone) to latch onto ever since.
I don’t want to face that void.
I just want to fill it.
And I’ve tried. With sex, drugs, exotic trips. When that didn’t work, I turned to achievement, to purpose.
But the truth is that no person or project will ever be what my dad was to me.
Sometimes I wonder if this compulsion inside me, this obsessive, insatiable parasite, is just a little kid who misses his dad, who’s been searching desperately for something or someone to fill the void he left behind when he didn’t come home.
A child who clings too tightly to people who show him even the smallest ounce of affection, who is deluded enough to think that a successful career is a substitute for a father.
In my dream, I saw myself through a sea of foot traffic on a crowded city street, seated in a chair, unblinking, staring at me with the same glint in his eyes as the shark closing in on the injured swimmer, the bloodhound cornering its shaking quarry.
And I was afraid.
