Issue #116: When a void is also a window
The upside of things not working out.
We’ve all been there. The short, sharp shock of a No or We regret to inform you… or I can’t do this. The crisis that prompts a handbrake turn: turning your life in an unfamiliar direction, the road ahead barren and uninspiring, the horizon hopeless, in the face of what you’ve lost.
I’ve known that feeling. The breakdown of romantic relationships and would-be relationships (and the fantasies of said relationships I’d built up in my head); the loss of freelance jobs I structured my weeks around; the pile-up of rejected pitches synonymous with life as a journalist. The abrupt ending of a close friendship with someone I once spent endless hours on the phone to.
After each of these things happened, a void opened up.
I’m putting it abstractly – a void – but what are we actually talking about here? The 168 hours that make up our weeks. The square footage of our homes. The limited capacity of our conscious working memories (where we can hold between four to seven pieces of information at a time, depending on which scientist you speak to). The finite number of meaningful relationships we can nurture at one time. Our time, our attention.
When an unexpected chunk of that resource comes back to you, unaccounted for, it prompts the question: what could I devote it to? Exciting, right…? (Right?!)
Encountering the void, excitement tends to be the last thing on my mind. There are versions of my life that might have existed if everything had gone ‘right’ – and I cling to them most tightly when things go tits up.
I think about my fantasy self. She has boundless confidence, because she knows from experience that if you try, you will succeed! She had a plan; the plan succeeded; and now her life rests peacefully on the rock-solid foundation of all the good decisions she made.
Except life – real life – is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. One road inevitably leads to another, even if it’s not the one you expected to take. I’ve seen it with my friends: redundancies or break-ups which inevitably turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to them. I reassure them, prematurely, that this will be the case. Meanwhile, I struggle to give the same compassion to myself.
And yet, and yet…
Over the past two years, most of the joy and novelty in my life has come, indirectly, from a feeling of loss or absence. The creative writing group I joined when I realised that writing fiction in isolation wasn’t working. The local community book club I started in response to loneliness. The friendships I made when others faded. All the sources of love I’ve learnt to pay attention to in the absence of the romantic relationship I once imagined would fulfil all my needs.
A void is also a window. The plot thickens; the stakes are raised; a heightened creativity is demanded by the open-ended ‘What next?’ Experience has taught me the hard lesson that I only have so much control. Equally, I don’t know what I don’t know. What I perceived as a void is, simultaneously, a window to something special.
I discovered a new podcast this week: 60 Songs That Explain the ‘90s. I say new – it’s actually been going strong since 2022, yet it was delivered to me afresh by Spotify’s algorithm, so I’m now working through it chronologically like a syllabus.
Although I am a ‘90s child, some of the earlier songs passed me by: like ‘Hey Jealousy’ by the Gin Blossoms released in 1992, when I was just one year old.
Anyway, I can’t stop thinking about this one lyric:
The past is gone, but something might be found
To take its place
Change is inevitable, but it tends to open up a vacancy.
I interviewed the author
earlier this week, the first leg on her book tour for Table for One, her second novel. Having been a fan of Emma’s work for the best part of a decade, I noticed an intriguing parallel between Table for One and Emma’s debut novel, Olive: both begin with the protagonist navigating a significant breakup in her thirties. A parallel made even more intriguing because Emma has been in her relationship, now her marriage, ever since her early thirties. Why this preoccupation?Emma told me – and the 100+ lovely audience members that came to the event – that writing her characters is a way to ‘try on’ other versions of her life: ‘In a way, every character is me.’ A break-up, as Emma depicts so compellingly, can be a drastic force for change. Writing her character, Willow, has taught her to be bolder, to take life into her own hands. To take driving lessons again (this answer made us laugh – because Emma meant it literally, yet we were all aware of what an apt metaphor this was).
For Willow, too, the void is a window; and eventually a force for courage and change. We can all take inspiration from that, both in fiction and in real life.
