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 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.

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 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.