I am nothing

I am nothing.

Let that sit with you for a moment.

I am nothing. But I don't want your pity. Here's why:

For the past four years, and possibly more, I have felt this deep, aching, emptiness where my heart is adrift from any anchorage within my body. I saw a dear friend and the world's best energy healer last week and I described it to him as "disembodied". I literally feel like I am not in my body. It's like I'm here, but not here.

So, last year, I felt the solution was to return home to my family and my place of birth was what I needed to feel...well, something. And so, much to my children's disappointment, we moved. This weekend, we moved again into a more central and sunny house. And somehow I expected that nagging void to disappear, but no, that gaping emptiness was there. I hadn't escaped it, I hadn't filled it up. I felt nothing. I was nothing.

Usually at this point, I slip into a deep depression, but - unlike every other time in my life where I have felt adrift - I sat with it. At first, it was uncomfortable, surely something should be there, surely I need to fill this empty space up with something, anything.

Instead something amazing happened when I embraced that inner nothing; I felt empowered and happy and fully present. It was transformational.

Every single one of us begins with this nothingness when we are born and over time, with loving care and nurturing from our caregivers, we start to fill the nothingness with things which tell us who we are - girl or boy, tall or short, like to read or play with trucks - our identity starts to be built on how others respond to us and we join in the game of building our ego.

Of course, psychologists tell us a healthy ego is important. But what if, in that nothingness we have no ego, we are as clean as the day we were born and in that space, rather than hopelessness and despair, we can feel empowered and indestructible?

Perhaps that nothingness is that space that we spend hours in meditation and yoga seeking to experience, but the way to get to a still mind is the dissolution of our ego and of everything we think we are. Perhaps they are both the same thing.

What I've experienced the past month went from almost checking myself into hospital for planning to kill myself, to feeling like nothing to feeling completely open and ready for whatever comes. It's been a roller-coaster. And it is through no longer attaching myself to markers of who-I-think-I-am; things like gender, race, social conditioning, hobbies and interests. I've done enough self-reflection to know that this space of empowered nothingness won't last forever, but now I have a new way of processing it in my mind when it comes up.

It's strange how I've spent my whole life running away from this feeling, but when I turned around to face it, everything changed. Perhaps if we embrace the uncomfortable feelings with curiosity and compassion we might just experience life in a fuller, more authentic way.

In love,

Alyssa