How I’m Milking my Love of Halloween 365 Days per Year Just to Feel Something
I am a dry well.
You cannot draw water from a dry well.
Lately, the small sacred voice inside of that tells me what feels right has gone quiet. The urge to receive external validation has been overwhelming. I just want to feel good or, in the absence of goodness, at least something with more shape and mass than the dank dread obscuring the bottom of my well.
I want points. I want something to point to that says “I am good. I am doing well.” Like good grades or accolades. But this will not solve the problem. This is like trying to fill the well with white noise: Shapeless. Massless. It’s no more filled by this than it is by the shadows cast by its depth.
This metaphor feels stupid. Everything feels stupid. Except for Halloween.
Halloween is such frivolous fun, I keep it going 365 days per year. My apartment is decorated for Halloween at all times. There are orange, purple, and green spiderweb lights in my outlets at all times. I have sculptures of pumpkins and skeletons on the shelves where others might keep family heirlooms. I scream while I watch horror movies with my best friends largely to feel a more robust spectrum of emotions. I have chocolate peanut butter cups in the door of my fridge at all times. Halloween is amazing.
I don’t have a solution for my lack of intrinsic motivation lately. I am going through the motions of my life as I sit at the bottom of my well with that quiet voice, listening intently in case it has something to say. And in the meantime, I am slathering an orange and black veneer on everything because at least that cheers me up.