This week, I stumbled on a metaphor for how I’ve been feeling about life:
I have this hole inside of me. The hole is despair. It’s painful to look at the hole — or even think about it — and there’s a gnawing fear that I might fall in. So, I try to cover over the hole with planks of wood. Some of these planks are healthy (like helping others or taking care of myself) and some are my avoidant behaviors. But certain avoidant behaviors, like drinking, chip away at the hole and make it bigger so that I need even more planks to cover it.