I haven’t been the kindest to myself in the short time that I have been unemployed. I had anticipated a dip in my general mood, of course, and I mentally braced myself to the best of my ability. But never having experienced unemployment in my adulthood until now, I not only feel restless, irresponsible, and overall like an abject failure, but also a profound sense of loss — of purpose, time, and worst of all, identity. I am grieving.
Spiralling downward and hitting more rock bottoms on the way than I knew existed, I feel parts of myself chipping away, and I catastrophise that I may never get them back. It is then that I realise that it is not darkness I am afraid of, but emptiness. And I feel empty, and naturally, nothing else. I go about my day, drowning in this nothingness while my body, dissociated from my mind, does the laundry, goes to the gym, and walks the dog. But I don’t feel hunger, thirst, or lust unless, and sometimes even if, I alter my state of consciousness chemically with various medications and other substances.
I look back at the feelings I used to be able to feel, only to see them fall away from me the way Eurydice did from Orpheus on the verge of returning to life. I grasp, but in vain. All I can do is watch helplessly. To let them go, because that’s all I can do. To accept, because that’s all I can do, too.
But even in my dissociated state, I periodically manage to remind myself of Buddhist teachings I grew up with, the very same lessons that my mother still imparts with me every time we talk on the phone. Nothing is permanent. Attachment causes suffering. When I was young, and even up until quite recently, I have never imagined that I would be the kind of person to be leaning on faith during hard times. In my mind, I was always a woman of science. I and never thought twice about dichotomising ‘religion’ and ‘science’ as they have been presented as binary opposites in societies I have lived in. Life — and perhaps my training in anthropology that taught me the falsity of such dichotomies, too — continues to humble me in this way.
As I build up the strength to fill my emptiness, I remind myself of the faith I have in Truths, scientific or religious, for I realise that they aren’t always contradictory or mutually exclusive. The teaching that nothing is permanent isn’t all that different from the concept of entropy; uncertainty principle can explain the ways in which attachment to certain expectations and outcomes can lead to emotional distress. And if nothing is permanent, I can rest a little knowing that this pain, this emptiness, too, shall pass.