I want to invite you to come with me
on a walk inside the mind of,
me,
"The bottomless pit."

I'm the “nothing is ever enough”
The “I always need more”
The person who seems to be unable to hold onto anything
anyone has ever offered.
Who begs you to say something helpful or comforting one day,
but then needs you to say it all over again the following day,
and the next.
And the next.
The person who can’t seem to find a way to use anything you say to them,
anything you give them.
To hold anything.

Ready to put on these shoes
and take a walk with me?

The world, is a really frightening place.
Started out that way.
Mother wasn’t really cut out for mothering.
Didn’t have anything to give to a baby apart from practical care
—given in a no-nonsense kind of way
—because she hadn’t had it herself.
So, inside, she was a bottomless pit too,
hungry for what she never had,
resentful of being required to give what she never had to someone else.

In fact,
truth be told,
mom was even a bit envious of her little girl.
Why should baby girl be the center of the universe when she,
the mother,
had never been given that at all?
Living life as if it owes her.
Believed that I owed her, too.
I was her second chance.
I should give her everything that her own mother had been unable to give.
No blame,
It was as it was.
It’s as it is.

Fairly early on in life,
I learned that I come second.
That I didn’t deserve.
That good things were not for me.
That life was not kind,
or comforting,
or soothing or giving.
Rather, life was punishing,
taking and begrudging.
But something even harder came with that.
I grew up unable to hold anything.
One of the greatest of human pains there is.
Growing up empty.
It feels frightening.
Joyless.

It’s to be untouched by anything good,
to be unable to remember it,
or conjure up the feeling of it.
Everything is fleeting and temporary.
It goes in but it just falls right back out.
Like trying to hold onto water it's,
"The Void."

See, you can only hold onto things if you have been held.
If your life has included being physically,
emotionally or psychologically held.
If you have felt
and known that you were existing in another’s heart and mind.
We only know we exist because we first discovered
that we existed in the heart and mind of another.
And if we haven’t had that,
moments vanish.
Others’ words vanish.
At least, “good” moments and “good” words do.
“Bad” moments stay because there’s no way to soothe them.
And “bad” words stay because they are all we have known,
so familiar and trusted.

Oh and it doesn’t end there.
It gets worse.
As an adult, you continue to feel like a hungry,
needy child.
Just like mother was.
You feel so bad about that,
so ashamed,
so inadequate.
You hate and despise yourself.
A horrible person for being so full of
hurt
and anger
and resentment.

And the worse you feel about yourself,
the more you try to compensate by being
“good.”
Trying hard to meet everyone's every need,
and resent it while believing that you are bad for resenting it.
No one is happy in this arrangement
—there is duty here, not love.
Although most would insist on calling it love
and most believe it is love,
Most don't really know what this thing called love actually is.

I go through periods of the darkest,
most desolate,
depression.
I will catapult between anger and grief.
I will cry for days.
I will walk out.
I will shout and think cruel things.
Then will be overcome by guilt and remorse.
And shame.
Oh, always the shame.

And I try even harder.
When it gets really bad,
I will ask for help in my own way.
I'm clearly in so much distress that others are eager to try and help me.
Giving hugs,
words of encouragement,
practical offers and words of wisdom.
And I will expresses my gratitude
and appear to absorb it all
and feel better.
And the people will feel gratified
and content that their help has made a difference and somehow
filled this "Bottomless Pit."

However, in "The Bottomless Pit",
all it has actually been is a plaster.
It has helped temporarily.
But the void
—the bottomless pit
—remains.
Everything is just as hollow,
empty,
frightening and meaningless as before.

I am still a “bad” person and I still hate myself.
I genuinely try to do the things I have been advised to do.
I read the books.
I write the love letters.
I say words of affirmation as if they are sacred,
magic rituals that will bring about some kind of miraculous healing.
I try to love myself like everyone tells me to do.
But always,
there is the void,
always the bottomless pit.
Always the inability to hold onto.