I’m going through a very difficult and sad time now. It’s a
culmination of things, some big and some small, some known, some not but it has
always been a fact that I am right on the verge of being extremely happy and/or
very sad. I walk that tightrope daily. I’m an emotional person with a loud,
active mind that is always thinking, always analyzing. I’m hard to reach but I
love easily, hurt easily and worry constantly. I love hard. I hurt hard. I
think hard. Being so passionate and so analytical at once can be a lot of fun and
very useful and yet it can be absolutely brutal at other times. This is one of
those times.
I feel so restless lately. My patience is thin and my mood
shifts. I still want to be kind, relaxed and easy going but I get overwhelmed
emotionally so much quicker than before. Have you ever been feeling completely
good physically but exhausted mentally? Now you might think, well he’s been
through a lot lately and this is merely a reflection of that. I won’t disagree
but I feel like the adversity of late has only magnified what feels like something
that has been a lifelong struggle for me.
When I was younger “a feeling” always gnawed away at me. I
never could figure it out and for most of my teen years I tried to ignore it
and just go with the flow. As I finished high school it became nearly
impossible to ignore. I thought it was a deep rooted curiousness based on my
emerging individuality. Basically, I thought it was kind of an identity crisis.
I needed to know who I was. That must be it. I was tired of pretending to be
something I was not. I was a little bit of an outcast anyway so I wasn’t a
complete follower, but the times I was, it was at the expense of my curious
mind and genuine heart, two things that could no longer be denied. Who was I
really?
So I explored to my soul’s content and I found out all about
the people, places and things I liked, didn’t like and absolutely loved. I
tried new things and took notice of my reactions to them. Frankly, this is a
journey that I’m still on and hopefully will be for as long as I live but let’s
just say I’m not as wide-eyed now as I was 15-20 years ago. I know more now.
I’ve grown a bit more decided and quicker to trust my intuition than the naïve
overgrown kid with time on his side. Knowing myself and learning all the things
I learned inside and out has strengthened me and made me who I am today but
that gnawing feeling I felt all those years ago remains. The point is, I feel
like I know myself pretty well by now but I feel like something’s missing. It’s
the same feeling I’ve always had, kinda like a tickle in the back of my mind. I
feel like I have a hole in my soul.
It’s more than a simple emptiness. It’s a lingering,
enduring feeling that something isn’t right because something isn’t there. There’s
underlying sadness even when I’m happiest but on the other side there is often
underlying joy and hopefulness even when I am at my saddest, like I still
believe I can find whatever it is that’s missing. The more time goes by the more
I think about it. I try to problem solve and then when I can’t find the answer
I need, I try to cope best I can. Perhaps it is inevitable to feel this way. In
my late 20’s I discovered this thing called Myers-Briggs. It’s basically a
personality test where you fall into one of 16 categories. My Myers-Briggs
personality type indicator is INFJ. It stands for Introversion, iNtuition,
Feeling, Judging. Introversion over extroversion, intuition over sensing,
feeling over thinking and judging over perception. INFJs are only about 1%-2%
of the population and males are rarer than females. So according to them I am
the rarest one of all! We INFJs tend to be creative, smart, focused on fantasy
more than reality, attracted to sad things, fearful of doing the wrong thing,
observant, avoidant, fearful of drawing attention to self, anxious, cautious,
somewhat easily frightened, easily offended, private, easily hurt, socially
uncomfortable, emotionally moody, do not enjoy being looked at, fearful,
perfectionists, we can sabotage ourselves, can be wounded at the core, value
solitude, guarded, not like crowds, organized, second guessing ourselves,
focused on peoples hidden motives, prone to crying, not competitive, prone to
feelings of loneliness, not spontaneous, prone to sadness, longing for a
stabilizing relationship, fearful of rejection in relationships, frequently
worried, can feel victimized, prone to intimidation, have lower energy and are strict
with ourselves. Basically we tend to be sad souls.
So maybe that’s why I feel like I have this hole in my soul.
That sounds like the most logical explanation… I’m just destined to feel this
way. But being so analytical I can’t help but wonder if maybe something IS
missing. Is there something out there that will make me more complete, less sad
and feeling less broken? That maybe someway, somehow, someday I could find some
achievement, some goal I haven’t met yet that can provide me with the
satisfaction my hungry soul needs.
If that is possible then the question becomes; what’s
missing? Obviously, if I knew definitively what it was I’d like to think I’d
work hard to get it but what could it be? There are several possibilities…
God? Could it be that the hole in my soul is my lack of
faith? I haven’t totally believed since I was a kid so maybe the lifelong
absence I feel is of a spiritual nature. I can’t say for sure and maybe I’ll
never know until God confirms its’ existence to me. Even though part of me
believes, my lifetime has shown me more evidence to not believe. Before any
religious folk judge me let me just say I do have spirituality in my life. Just
because I’m not godfull doesn’t mean I’m godless. I’ve taken lessons and
teachings from various schools of thought and have incorporated it into my own
code of conduct, my own philosophy. I think Buddha and Jesus are both great
dudes. I try to lead a good life and those values and ideas have come from many
places, some of them the same as yours. I just haven’t had that moment, an
epiphany if you will, where my doubts are put to rest, maybe I never will. Perhaps
this is why my soul is restless.
Maybe it’s from the lack of connections. All I ever want is
to make REAL connections with people. I want to find a real depth of feeling
with them. Honestly when I meet people I try to ascertain their depth level
almost immediately. If I think they have what I seek or at least the potential I
become intrigued in both knowing them and connecting with them, if not, then I
tend to write them off. Until they prove to me otherwise, I'll maintain a very superficial relationship with them, that is I don't really consider them a friend, more like somebody "I know" instead. I have NO time in my life for
shallow people. Now everyone’s idea of depth doesn’t mesh with mine and that’s
why this isn’t easy. Plus people who have endeared themselves to us come and go and must be replaced. It's exhausting. I certainly haven’t connected with enough people to appease
my appetite, maybe I never will. With all the trials and tribulations we face
on a daily basis I am surprised by this. For as much as we are different we
also so much the same. We walk the same roads and feel the same things. Why
don’t I have more genuine connections? It’s as much my fault as it is yours…
okay, maybe more mine. I’m not always open for business and many times my
hours of operation don’t coincide with yours so possibly one of us is closed
when we cross paths. I can only be open so many hours a week. Social
interactions, even with people I know can be exhausting to me so I have to be choosy, but the fact
remains, I really do want to connect with people. One day I might connect
with just one person or with 30 more people and then my need to connect will
subside.
Maybe I’m onto something. Perhaps I need to connect with
just one person. Perhaps I just lack that “soulmate”, that companion, partner,
the one. Could this be why my soul aches… a lack of soulmates? It seems like
the easiest solution. It may not sound logical but maybe when I find someone to
share everything I have inside with my hole will close. The hole in my soul
could be filled by her love. It’s another intriguing thought. Maybe when I find
my loving companion my restless soul will be at peace.
But what if I can’t find that closure until I find out why
I’m even here? For someone who is always trying to find the meaning in things,
perhaps it is a surprise that I cannot find that meaning of the biggest thing I
know… my life. Does my life have any meaning to it? Have I found my calling? If
I have not, when will I and if I have, have I pursued it with the ambition
necessary to grow it to its’ full potential? Perhaps I feel like something is
missing because something is; my calling, my career, my meaning. Do I linger
incomplete because I have not completed THIS journey?
Or am I hurting deep inside as a consequence of a pain
filled life? I’ve had more family members die than I’d like to count, I’ve lost
2 friends, one to murder, one to suicide and I’ve faced death a few times on my
own. Have the losses, the struggle, the heartbreaks, hardships and misfortune
simply been too much for my gentle soul to endure? Is it a lifetime burden I struggle
with? In some ways I feel lucky to have experienced all I have and to still be
here and be able to not only discuss them at length but to take the positives
from each situation forward with me. There’s no doubt the pain has made me
stronger but I can’t help but feel like I lose a small part of myself through
every moment of major adversity. Does each blow make the hole grow bigger? If so, how
do I reverse this? Is there a way? Is love the answer? Someone once said; All you need is love.
I find myself at a loss. Could any of these things fill the
vacancy and make my soul feel complete? Will it take all of them? Some of them?
None of them? Is this merely loneliness, emptiness, stubbornness brought on by
a unique and terribly complex personality? I want to know the answers. I want
to know the remedy, scratch that; I need to know the remedy. I wonder if I can
ever fill the hole in my soul.
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