Empty Spaces

In this guest post, Edward brings us a short prose piece relating to the current social climate. Take a read, take care, and know that we’ll be together again soon. Thank you, Edward, for sharing these beautiful words.

---

Empty Spaces

by Edward Ahern

• • •

We define ourselves by the spaces we fill, by our closeness, one to another, to another. The surging floods of faces and bodies reassure us that we’re a snugly fitting part of a larger whole. When our outsides are vacated and we’re boxed away or hidden behind masks, we can’t help but worry.

We’re pack animals with strong loves for group and territory. When both are withheld, we suffer from social vertigo. And worry, not just about today, but tomorrow as well. How will friendship and work companionship be deformed, or worse go missing? Can we return to touching shoulders with strangers in stadiums? Can we still find someone special when the social places, shuttered now, may be changed to dancing six feet apart?

The empty parking lots we drive by on our way to buy food and medicine mean gapingly empty parts of our lives. Can we begin to recover that?

We shouldn’t have to measure closeness with caution, but will for some time to come. And then eventually, as we create tolerance of a new disease, we’ll resume old ways. And the empty spaces will be filled by our needed sense of place, of closeness, one to another, to another.

---

Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had over two hundred fifty stories and poems published so far, and six books. Ed works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories, where he sits on the review board and manages a posse of six review editors.

Metamorphosis

I’ve recently noticed that social media has evoked a lot of its users to promote being stagnant or unchanging. I want to encourage you to partake in healthy rest and seasons of patient pauses, but to continue in the velocity of internal growth or the pursuit of it. With that, this string of consciousness was born: Metamorphosis.

---

You don’t need a sign to awaken and self reflect to want to rebirth from your present self and remain in a state of humility becoming a patiently learning larva that sheds its skin through the consumption of truth to build yourself a hidden chrysalis where you grow without all eyes watching and the world may see you as dormant but you’re growing wings and will emerge with an undeniable transformation and you don’t need a sign to encourage this growth in another or to make this metamorphosis cyclical within yourself

A Decade of Introspection

With the new year quickly approaching, I sat down to write and reflect on this past decade. I wanted to share it to be an encouragement to you, dear reader, in whatever stage of life you or your loved ones may be in. Life is complex, messy, and full of beauty and transitions.

---

At the start of the decade, I was living within a world of depression, listening to my demons, finding solace in darkness, deafening my reality through near-daily drug use. 

I became addicted to that lifestyle, so encompassed that it itself tried to suffocate me. And in a last ditch effort, playing the odds of Russian roulette, I left everything and moved across the country. 

That’s where I was able to meet myself; I learned my love for writing, and drew closer to my sister. I learned to throw out religion, and draw into a relationship with God. That’s when the healing happened. 

I got clean from cocaine, opioids, and was freed from my long-standing eating disorders. I was able to begin to think clearly, openly, honestly, vulnerably. I wrote everything down. 

I met my husband and we fell in love quickly. We got married shortly after. There is such beauty when two imperfect people come together in partnership. We learned to embrace conviction and challenges. We learned how to speak to each other with truth and love. 

I learned that healing is a journey. For even though my freedom happened in a moment, the demons were persistent and continuously tried to make a home out of me. I sometimes succumbed to them, but more often, I rejected them. I was able to build this muscle. The resistance became easier. Depression is no longer my normal. I’m filled with so much more joy and warmth and happiness than I ever thought possible. 

I see my early 2010 self, and my heart is moved with compassion. I’m just so thankful that I held on for a little longer, and moved forward with the loving words from the small, still voice in my head. 

It feels like every year becomes challenging in different ways, and that our exposure to complex experiences increases. I think it’s meant to be that way. Even if our hours, weeks, years seem to be the darkest or the most dismal, there is a bright and beaming hope.

More than anything, I’m filled with anticipation for the growth to be had: the soil, the seeds, the shoots, the fruit. All I can be is full of gratitude and awe for the contrast between the beginning and end of this decade. 

And while my mind can’t fully comprehend it, I know that still, the best is yet to come.

---

This past decade I wrote a book, sharing more of my journey: the struggles, healing and the all the in-between moments. It’s titled Morning Air, Morning Light and is available through this site. If you’d like a book, but are unable to get a copy due to finances, send me a note here; I’ll be sure to send you one!

Illustration by Regan Smith; photo by Eliza Miller.