How do I meet the emptiness..

I have been feeling so empty.

I see the ways I try to fill and numb. I don’t know why. What am I running from feeling? Why is the emptiness there? Why has it felt so unbearable the past 6 months. I was sexually assaulted 6 months ago now that I think about it but I still don’t really feel like it was his fault..I don’t really feel like it was a big deal. Alcohol was involved, I tried to get out of the situation but my friend made me delete the texts begging people to come pick me up as I began to slump over from how drunk I was, just knowing something bad was going to happen. The guys we were with were trying to pair me up with someone—they wanted to get me drunk, fuck me..I was just there for my friend. I had never met any of these people before but the things they were saying disgusted me. My friend’s crush was there and I was helping out as her wing woman. I didn’t want anything to happen. I could feel that something bad was going to happen. When it finally did happen, I didn’t struggle, I was falling over drunk. I think in the moment I thought I wanted it, even though minutes before when the final drops of my sober-ness were slipping away I was frantically fumbling my phone sending screenshots of my location for people to pick me up. I didn’t want it. I cried afterwards. He had a girlfriend. I felt mildly suicidal, but more in the sense of trying to do anything to escape my one body and my own reality because what I was experiencing emotionally the next day was not the kind of emotion you know how to hold. I felt self hatred. I blamed myself for sleeping with a guy who had a girlfriend. I told myself it was the most awful thing I had ever done. I was disgusted. The next morning my friend brushed it off and told me not to think too much about it. So I didn’t. But now here I am. Somehow still disconnected from myself as I spent so much time subconsciously escaping my body and that experience and the perpetual emotional experience that lingers. I feel sad. So deeply sad. I don’t know why I can’t get rid of the sadness. I take meds, I talk to my family, I hug my cat, I workout, I eat healthy, I do all the things you’re supposed to do to be mentally well and for some reason I still can’t escape the sadness. Maybe return is actually what I need. Maybe I need to greet the sadness and sit with it rather than try to escape it—but that doesn’t work either. I feel like I’m wallowing in pity and hopelessness in a way I have never before. I think I’m addicted to it. Maybe my pain feels more bearable when I’m able to trick myself into believing that it belongs there indefinitely. Life feels empty now, but for some reason, I imagine a life without the pain and sadness to be just as, if not more, empty…maybe it’s because it’s all I can feel in my stomach. Maybe I need to focus on filling and replacing with hope and love instead of just emptying out the sadness to leave behind some big gapping black hole. No wonder I cling to it. I feel as though I will be nothing without it. I cling onto all the pain I have experienced in my life…and this is a weird thing for me to accept, given my optimistic and strong willed demeanor. I have never thought of myself as someone that carries their pain as a badge they shove in everyone’s faces. I keep it hidden. But somehow that probably makes me even more protective of it—my pain is not my persona, but rather my own intimate secret world—something that’s truly mine and only mine. How do I let go? How do I get up? How do I wake up?

How do I meet the emptiness..