Trying To Fill An Empty Space

I am a human being with no talents. I am a person with no hobbies. I am a girl with no interests.

I am boring.

For the longest time, I didn't care that I am bland, that I have nothing to say in the matter of myself. But then I realized how bleak and quite honestly empty I am.

I need to find something. Something that I can call my own. When people ask me about myself, I want to have things to say. I want to be someone who plays multiple sports, has an apparent knack for art, and perhaps is incredibly talented at singing. Or maybe I want to be someone who is amazing at dance; someone who can play the piano.

I just want to be somebody. Because I am no one at the moment. And trust me, being no one doesn't count as a characteristic. Being no one just feels like you don't exist at all; it really does make you believe you're a ghost at some point, a dead soul walking around among the living.

I'll tell you, I am sick of being a ghost. I want to be alive.

So here goes nothing. I will find something of my own; something to love.

I will find myself, in a way.

1: Dance

I tried dancing today. It was... disciplined, that's for sure. It was strict, stretchy, awkward, and those leotards—don't even get me started. The tights were impossible to put on, and the leotard was so, so tight I felt like my body would shrink into the spandex mold.

In other words, I think I hated it. Actually, I did hate it. It was awful.

Considering I couldn't do the poses correctly due to much lack of exercise and stretching and whatnot, things did not work out the way I had wanted them to.

So all I can say is: dance is most definitely crossed off the list as a no-go.

2: Basketball

I sucked at basketball too. Shocker.

For me, it was hard to control the ball amidst all that bouncing. It kept rolling away, and why is the court so big, by the way? It's tiring to run all that way. Or maybe I'm just out of shape.

I didn't get one shot in. The ball never once went through that goddamn hoop. It was pretty degrading, actually, to fail at getting a ball less than half my size and weight through a ten-foot-high net.

Basketball is also definitely a sport for taller people, which is another thing I learned from my short experience.

And so, already exhausted by how things are going, basketball is also a no. A big one.

3: Swimming

I can't do the fricking strokes. Not the backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, or sidestroke. I can't even do the damn freestyle.

My arms are noodly messes. I can't hold my breath as long as it takes to be able to do any swimming stroke well, let alone swim at all. Sometimes I even feel like I could drown, not having gone to the pool in ages and all.

Still, I haven't lost all hope. Just because I apparently suck at dancing, playing basketball, and swimming, doesn't mean there's not something out there I'm good at.

So-long swimming, is all I'll say. You are physically exhausting and you make swimming a whole other level of complicated when really it should be simple.

Swimming is a big, fat X on my list.

4: Art

Something strange happened today. Something like a good kind of strange.

I tried painting. I'll be honest, I went into it with almost no motivation or hope. I nearly didn't even try.

But my wanting to fill an empty space within me gave me most if not all of the will to try.

I was just looking at the blank canvas before me, and all I could think about was how I didn't want to ruin something perfectly clean and white.

But I realized something. I realized that the canvas wasn't perfect. It was empty.

Like me.

I looked at all the paint beside me and back at the canvas and thought, I am the canvas. My whole life I've been blank, clean, full of nothing. Nothing that pops, nothing out of place, nothing unique. Nothing special.

I don't want to be a canvas anymore, is what I thought to myself. It's time I added color to this empty space of mine.

So I painted. Recklessly, wildly, and most of all: colorful. And it almost felt like a relief, to let myself go for a little.

And I found I was quite good, too. I was good at it. The right colors mixed and mashed, and overlapped in just the right ways. The shapes and curves and slashes and squiggles created what could only be a masterpiece. A masterpiece that was created by my own two hands, a paintbrush, and a palette full of colors.

And suddenly, the empty space within me had been filled. Covered with colors.