This is an experiment from a few years ago. Somehow it seemed appropriate on this day after the election here in the US.
I am made of what’s missing.
Those who should be here are not. A felt sense of a person out there where my mother is, where my father is. A person out there to whom I do not feel connected. A person out there who is not present with me here. A person out there from whom I am separated.
A person-sized bubble, dark blue-gray, an empty darkness inside, with a clear boundary. Nothing comes out, nothing goes in. It’s horrible in its emptiness. Cool temperature. Moves around like a person doing this and that. Sometimes comes close, holds me, feeds me, whatever, but remains cool and closed. Sometimes a bit of a dissolving of the boundary, but retaining the integrity of the bubble nevertheless. Sound a dark, sonorous, deep groan like a ship bending as it sinks.
I am made of vulnerability.
I no longer have the protection of the womb, and there is nothing to replace it.
My skin, outline of my body. Tender and vulnerable, a baby’s skin but even more soft and fragile. Very sensitive, feeling everything. Warm, like baby skin.
I am made of longing.
There’s something I want. It’s out there. I don’t know what it is or how to get it.
It’s so weird. It’s like there is a lack, but I don’t have any knowledge that there is something that is supposed to be there, so I don’t notice it as a lack. My world is just empty, and that seems to be just how things are. But something in my chest tells me something’s missing, even though I have no idea how to know what that might be. It’s a kind of puzzling pain that I don’t know how to make sense of.
Like muscle? Not flesh, though. More like a synthetic material, something like what a dog toy might be made of, tough, slightly stretchy, resilient, resistant to being stretched or deformed but not rigid. Darkish beige brown color with darker veins in it. Neutral temperature or warm. Slight sound similar to the squeak of rubber sliding on rubber.
I am made of fear.
It’s not safe. Better to stay close to yourself. Better to stay in charge of your own experience and energy than to get involved with them. Stay small! Keep to yourself! They are not actually available to you.
Dark. Like a vacuum, trying to suck the boundary into itself. It wants not to be empty, it wants to be filled. Slightly warm, slightly feverish. Desperate. Strong force of sucking into the center. At the center might be a kind of portal into which anything in this space can get sucked. Sound of whimpering.
I am made of sadness.
It’s not like there is something I’ve lost, or some other reason for being sad. It’s like sadness is the air I breathe, it’s just a given, there all the time. In fact, I don’t really even notice it because it’s never really not there.
But somehow I know, things are not what they should be. Something is wrong, and it affects everything. Somehow I know the world should be different, and I am sad that it is not how it should be, and sad that I am so alone.
Pervasive, like in and around me. It’s like a dark mist slowly drifting through a primeval landscape in horizontal columns and sheets. Makes everything indistinct and darker, like the sun is hidden. Some sense of heaviness. It’s like the entire world is one big sadness dump. Cool, perhaps, or maybe warm and humid instead. A low, steady tone.
I am made of threat.
There is a kind of rawness, a danger and vulnerability inherent in being in the world.
Empty air with fast-moving, hard objects flying through at random, some of them sharp.
Stuff is happening outside. Sometimes it impacts me, and I have to deal with that impact. It’s no big deal, I am in my own world even so. I don’t feel in danger, exactly. It’s just... empty, I guess. Boring.
Chaotic stuff moving around outside me, some of in human form, some of it just stuff. Far-ish away, like outside the space of Alone. Various colors, and even the space between things and people seems to be filled in some way, and translucent. All of it is translucent. Moving randomly, chaotically. Muffled thumping of things bumping into one another, can hear some of the chaos, but it’s relatively quiet, even when there are actual real-world sounds.
I am made of powerlessness.
The most basic agency, that of choice, is not mine. All choices are made by those around me, and I am at their mercy.
I am at a loss, there is nothing I am able or free to do, to choose a different experience. My life experience is given to me by forces outside my control, and there is nothing I can do about it.
In my body and outside it maybe another 100% of my volume. Another buffer, similar to Alone, but closer to my center. This buffer makes it impossible for me to act and have any effect upon the world. I am encapsulated by a neutralizing space that makes me completely powerless.
Neutral temperature. Invisible, an emptiness no matter what I do. I can place my hand into this space, for example, and my hand will become as if empty and free of all force. No movement. No sound, or maybe the muffling of sound. Quiet.
I am made of my lone self.
This is my safe space, inside here. I go here to avoid noticing the restriction of the threat. I can create whole fantasy worlds from in here, and I do that regularly.
My body, or maybe a little smaller than my body by an inch or two. Another strangely clear/transparent field of emptiness. This one has a distinct shape and resilience of that shape. Neutral temperature, no movement, no sound.
I am made of absence.
This is the sense of a space around me through which there is no connection made between me and others around me. They are “out there,” away from me, and I am “in here,” away from them.
Empty space. A sense that stuff passes through, and people, but that in essence it is empty of what matters, which is presence. I do remember my mother’s presence, and maybe my father’s too, but they were “out there.” Between us was this empty space. Neutral temperature. No movement, no sound, dampening all sound and creating the illusion that everything is far away.
This state was my world, and it made it easy for me to be by myself, to entertain myself, to get lost in my own activities. I was exceptionally easy to care for.
I am in my own world. Lost in my own world.
All these things I am made of. And so, so much more.
You, too, more than you know.
What are you made of? Leave a glimpse in the comments, perhaps?