This Is Why You Feel So Fucking Empty Inside

You feel empty, because your appreciation doubles as soon as you experience loss. You don’t fully appreciate your old friends until they become strangers. You don’t fully appreciate your boyfriend until your relationship crumbles. You don’t fully appreciate your parents until they drop dead in front of you.

You feel empty, because you’re on a mission to be pretty. So you get your eyebrows threaded and you get your hair dyed. You paint your lips red and line your eyes with black. But it doesn’t help. You’re still a mess on the inside, even when you’re supermodel-pretty on the outside.

You feel empty, because you’ve been taught to value the wrong things. Texts. Emails. Likes. And when you get them, those things that you’ve been conditioned to think you want, you realize they aren’t important. That you don’t feel any better with a phone filled with notifications, because thirty likes aren’t any better than three. You still want more, because you think more will help, but it won’t. It will feed your temporary need for attention, but it won’t feed your soul.

You feel empty, because you’re human. And you have so much space inside you that it’s close to impossible to fill it all. But you can try. You have to try.

All of that emptiness is a product of your confusion. You don’t know what the hell you want out of this life, because you’ve never sat alone in an empty room, without the television or an iPod or your phone to break the silence, and asked yourself the question: What do you want?

We’re not talking about what career path you want to take. We’re not talking about what kind of person you want to spend forever with. Forget about those things. There’s more to life than your relationship and your career. So what do you, as an individual, want? What the hell do you want?

There has to be something. Something more to your life than eating, sleeping, working, repeating. Something more than the occasional outing to Applebees and annual trip to Florida. Something more than what you’ve grown used to experiencing.

Figure out what would make your hands shake, your heart soar, your soul sing, so you don’t die unfulfilled and empty.

Maybe you want to know what it feels like to dance in front of a crowd. Maybe you want to taste ice cream in Rome. Maybe you want to reconnect with your high school friends.

If you want it, if you think it will bring you even an ounce of happiness, do it. Don’t do it next year. Don’t do it tomorrow. Do it now. And if you don’t have the ability to do it now, then at least take a step toward it now. Sign up for the dance class. Research flights to Rome. Search for your old friends on Facebook.

Don’t settle for existing — for being a body with handfuls of money, but an empty heart. Actually live. Give yourself a reason to get up tomorrow, so you don’t end up stuffing yourself with drugs or alcohol or toxic boys. So you don’t end up creating an existence you’re ashamed of instead of a life you’re proud of.

Right now, you feel empty inside. Completely and utterly hallow. But you can fill yourself up with the right choices. You just can’t be afraid to make them.