On paper, I’m doing better than I ever have. Last week I turned 64 and it’s wild for me to think that next year I’ll be eligible for Medicare. I have no plans for retirement, though. In a month, I’ll have been at my job for a year, and this is the best clinic I’ve ever worked at. They value and respect us and treat us well. I plan to stay as long as possible.
In addition to a great job, next week I’ll be teaching my third class as an adjunct instructor at a local college. I developed the curriculum for this class, which was a lot of work, but I did a solid job.
I continue to write, publish, and post on this page. I’m about halfway through the first draft of my memoir and I’ve applied to a competitive 10-month memoir incubator program. They accept 10 students, and the decision will be announced in April. All I can do is wait.
One of my goals for 2025 is to grow my presence as an influencer in the mental health space on social media. I was invited to join a networking group and connect with people who can help me achieve this goal.
I have the best brother in the world, who is supportive and who loves me unconditionally. I have a small but close circle of good friends who I see often.
And then there is Shelby, the dog I rescued five-and-a-half years ago who I love in a different way. When I walk into my apartment she bounds toward me, tail wagging, and at night she curls up with me in my bed. We were both broken and we were meant to find each other.
So why do I feel as though something is missing? That there is an emptiness gnawing away inside me? Someone from the outside looking in might say I’m missing a significant other, but I identify as asexual, and while people who are asexual have the capacity to be in relationships, I’ve never been inclined.
Emptiness is one of the criteria for borderline personality disorder (BPD), which I was diagnosed with 36 years ago, although I haven’t met the criteria for BPD for almost 10 years.
In a post on feeling empty, Jonice Webb writes, “After years of working with folks who have described (these signals of) emptiness to me, I have seen what, for the vast majority of them, is the missing ingredient. It’s something that allows for happiness, fulfillment, intimacy, and motivation and adds color to your life. It’s something that, when it’s missing, you sense it and you feel it. It’s emotions.” Webb discusses the effect of emotional neglect in childhood, similar to an invalidating environment —which is the environment in which I was raised with an alcoholic father who used his intelligence to criticize with a sarcastic and acerbic tongue.
I have to ask myself if I am going through the motions or letting myself feel the full scope of emotions that I intellectually know are available to me. When I think of Marsha Linehan’s concept of the Wise Mind—with Emotion Mind and Reasonable Mind merging to create the ideal Wise Mind—I think of my mother, the consummate computer programmer who lived in Reasonable (or Logical) mind. She was the main source of affection toward me and my brother because my inenriated father lived in a state of angry Emotion Mind. I was terrified of him, yet my longing to please him lasted until the day he died.
Thinking about it, I feel that I may move mechanically from task to task, checking off the boxes on my to-do list. I have chronic insomnia and use the early morning hours to catch up on my documentation from work because if I try to write notes after 8 pm, they don’t make sense.
A 2020 study on emptiness and BPD, led by Caitlin Miller of Australia’s University of Wollongong, found that “Over 16 years, chronic emptiness had relatively poor remission rates compared to other symptoms, and high recurrence rates. These studies suggest that feelings of emptiness are difficult to alleviate due to being a ‘temperamental’ symptom enduring over time rather than an acute symptom.”
The more I do and the more I chase, the emptier I feel. I can’t sit and do nothing. I have to be at my computer while the television is on low in the background, either writing or going through emails.
I don’t know exactly what the answer is. Webb writes that she has “seen many, many adults, decades past their childhoods, who have learned how to step away from emptiness and toward their inner world of emotions. Even if it’s not easy work, it’s monumentally worthwhile work.”
Does “work” equal more therapy? I’ve had enough therapy. Since I terminated with my former therapist, Dr. Lev, I have gone back into therapy for high-functioning depression with therapists who accept insurance which Dr. Lev does not—but none of them can hold a candle to her level of skill. So, no more therapy.
What am I going to do? I’m not sure.