Emptiness

Emptinesses. There are many kinds of emptiness. I feel a great emptiness in my life, already since the beginning of the pandemic two years ago. An emptiness of meaning. More than a month ago I wrote about the depression I have been suffering from since the pandemic, and sometimes this depression gets stronger, and I am left without the strength to go on living.

What do I mean when I talk about something that gives meaning to my life? In general, a thing or a cause that is worth living for. For me this has always been activism, a social movement fighting for a more just world, lately mainly climate justice. But the pandemic has weakened many social movements, and while the climate emergency is advancing unchecked, today's movement is only a shadow of what it was before the pandemic, when it was possible to think of a real climate uprising (revolution?). And today? Almost nothing. Little mobilisation, little ambition. We are back to business as usual as we were 4-5 years ago, far from being able to imagine slowing down the collapse of the climate.

So there is this emptiness in my life, the lack of a movement, the lack of a cause. Nor do I see - at least not in Sevilla or in the Spanish state - a queer movement that really deserves the name movement (I'm talking about a radical, anti-system, queer movement..., and not the assimilationist LGBTI movement of NGOs financed through public subsidies).

And my work? I like working with my colleague, who is also a friend. But the work itself doesn't fulfil me either, it doesn't give meaning to my life. In fact, since the beginning of the pandemic I feel a strong imbalance, as the work remained, but the rest disappeared.

I see and feel an emptiness. An emptiness of meaning. And I feel: why go on living? Why go on fighting my demons? To go back to a life empty of meaning? What for?

And there is another great emptiness that sometimes seems much more attractive at the moment: death. The final emptiness. I am an atheist, so death is the end point.

What stops me is that I don't know any way to make my way to this emptiness that doesn't hurt. And, also, my friends. For now what stops me is to promise a friend not to hurt me this day. And the next day will be another day, and maybe one of these days I will find some strength again, or - hopefully - something that can give meaning to my life. In the meantime, I'm looking for my tricks not to hurt myself.