Matters of the Heart

Does everyone have this hole within them? This abyss within their very soul which refuses to be filled. It robs me of breath at times, brings me to tears, keeps me awake at night. What is this pain? This thirst? This emptiness? What goes there? It is as though I am a puzzle, missing a vital piece. The piece that makes the picture clear and the puzzle complete. These antidepressants that they put me on may help keep the depression at bay; but nothing fills the void, nothing dulls this hollow, aching pain. It is as though, every moment of every day, I am missing something; living a life that is not meant for me. Standing in someone else's shoes and longing for a pair that I may call my own. Longing for a place, a life that I can call my own. Will I ever have that? I optimistically tell myself over and over again that yes, yes I will have that. Someday. But someday becomes some other day and that day becomes yesterday and yesterday becomes a year ago and time goes by and the shoes don't fit and hole just keeps on growing. I should do something but I don't know what. I need to act on this but I don't know what to do. I decided that moving to Boston would be that act. I would carve out a niche there and I would build a person there, a person that I could proudly call myself. Because right now, forever, i have been a mere shell trying to hide how empty I am. Even as a child, the emptiness was there. See me jump in front of the video camera, see me in the center of every photo, see me declaring as loudly as I could "I am here! I am here!" Please see that I am here. Please assure me that I am here. Because even then, when I sat alone at night, listening to a sister snore, I felt as though something was not right. And I thought that if I spoke loudly enough, acted largely enough, that I would be enough. Enough for me. But it was never enough. Boston. How can one city change so many years of nothing? You will argue and I beg you not to. You do not know my heart. You do not know my mind. My father has always called me his 'little actress' and that is exactly what I am. I play my role and I play it damned well. I smile when I should smile and laugh when others laugh; I do what I am told, I do what I see others do. I am a mimic, I am a puppet, I am a shadow following everyone else's moves. I have yet to make a single step that I can call my own. Boston would be that step. I chose it. I loved it. All by myself. All. By. My. Self. It could be that step. But it is so far away, so out of reach. I can't afford it, I can't reach it and yet I keep telling myself that I will. Because when I was there, watching the pigeons in the Common, walking along the cobblestones of Harvard Square... when I was there the hole, the emptiness was gone. I didn't need anyone to tell me when to smile, when to step, when to do anything. I felt whole. I keep telling myself that I will reach it because the thought that I won't, the thought that I will forever be stuck here, sitting here, clutching at my chest, aching with the pain... the thought of that is agony. But this isn't that sort of story. My life isn't that sort of story. We don't, I don't have the money to just pick up and go. I don't have the resources, I don't have anything. I don't have anything. Look at me now, see me now for I don't break character so often. See me, see my life for what it is. A lie. I say that I will publish things, I say that I will go places, I say that I will someone when really... really I will just be here. Just be this. Just be playing this role. Sometimes I envy Jessie her escape. A lot of the time I envy her that. She doesn't have to worry about this. There is a line in a song by John Mayer: "So scared of getting older, I'm only good at being young." So Jessie stuck with what she was good at; being young; and now she will be young forever. And I will be here,listening to my ques, following the motions, acting like the grown up that I am expected to be, wearing shoes that will never fit.