LIFE UPDATE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13

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Invalid Submission
CHAPTER 13: EMPTY ichigonya CHAPTER 13: EMPTY ichigonya

Invalid Submission

One of the worst parts of being traumatized by something else than familial abuse is the empty and hollow feeling I experience in relation to the identity of a trauma survivor. I cannot separate myself from something that shaped me as a person in such a fundamental way, it just has to become part of who I am, who I see myself as. But when there is a clear disconnect in my lived life experience as a traumatized person and the image the rest of the world wants to project, how am I supposed to find myself whole?

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Guts & Core
CHAPTER 13: EMPTY ichigonya CHAPTER 13: EMPTY ichigonya

Guts & Core

I remember the very first time I heard about BPD emptiness when I was talking to the psychiatrist of the ward I was staying at in 2022, how understood I felt by the sheer mention of the word “emptiness”. It felt like I was finally being given the language to describe the gut-wrenching pain that had been eating me alive for the past year. Going back to the journal entries of late 2021 and early 2022, I’d written about a sensation of something gnawing at my insides, with no idea as to where it was coming from. 

But there were other phrases I had used, too, to describe the feeling of emptiness. This article and the two illustrations are a representation of both of those sides of the emptiness coin. 

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Gaping Heart
CHAPTER 13: EMPTY ichigonya CHAPTER 13: EMPTY ichigonya

Gaping Heart

When I was still in university, I remember feeling this unexplainable hollowness right above where my heart would be. The last year of scrambling through assignments and seminars was one of the most difficult time periods of my life, with my health collapsing while the work pile on my desk only grew higher. And the strange emptiness did nothing but add onto the already agonizing existence. 

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This Is All Pointless
CHAPTER 13: EMPTY ichigonya CHAPTER 13: EMPTY ichigonya

This Is All Pointless

A lot of the times, I feel like there is no point to anything I’m doing. It doesn’t only include art and all the other side hustles that I have created for the project, but it’s about everything that my life is. Being here, breathing, existing, moving from one day to another. If it’s all filled with physical and mental pain, how am I supposed to have the urge to continue living?

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Withdrawing
CHAPTER 13: EMPTY ichigonya CHAPTER 13: EMPTY ichigonya

Withdrawing

When I’m going through my worst depressive episodes, one of the things that brings me way more suffering than I already need to be under is social isolation. It is so easy to just stay at home, not get out of bed all way, and retrieve into yourself and your misery even when the people close to you just want to help and be there for you. It infuriates me to no end, because I know that what I’m doing is not helping me in any way, but when you don’t have the energy to get up and fix something for yourself to eat, how are you supposed to do something so taxing as socializing with other people?

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Out of Reach
CHAPTER 13: EMPTY ichigonya CHAPTER 13: EMPTY ichigonya

Out of Reach

I have had many doctors in my time of being in active treatment. The one who diagnosed me with dissociative disorder in 2023 said that it was specifically my severe dissociation that made me unable to work regularly. He deemed my capabilities of any labor without proper treatment and therapy as next to none, especially due to all the cognitive delay and decline dissociation has caused me ( and continues to).

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Brand New Day
CHAPTER 13: EMPTY ichigonya CHAPTER 13: EMPTY ichigonya

Brand New Day

A sense of frustration and hopelessness. Waking up to another day. “Why couldn’t I have just stayed asleep? Now I need an excuse to get out of bed, and I think I’m running out of them at this point.”

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I Don't Know How To Feel Anymore
CHAPTER 6: DISCONNECT ichigonya CHAPTER 6: DISCONNECT ichigonya

I Don't Know How To Feel Anymore

 Dissociation leads me to the feeling of emptiness very often. People with BPD experience a chronic feeling of "emptiness", as if something is missing within themselves, a part of their soul is lost, and all you have left is the hollow empty feeling of a shell. This is a common struggle for myself, too, even without dissociation. But dissociation makes it easily ten times worse.

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My Soul Is An Infinite Pit Of Emptiness
CHAPTER 2: BLADE ichigonya CHAPTER 2: BLADE ichigonya

My Soul Is An Infinite Pit Of Emptiness

 Last summer, I spent over a month on the psychiatric ward. I was acutely suicidal, I had planned everything for the moment I was going to kill myself. The month I spent in the hospital gave me a lot of answers to my situation, and the most important one of them all was a name for everything that was wrong with me. 

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