What Were My Dreams Trying to Tell Me?
The author reflects on a period of personal crisis in their youth, characterized by a profound sense of emptiness and self-destructive behavior. The narrative explores the intersection of psychological distress and the search for meaning.
Why it matters
It provides a humanistic perspective on mental health and the existential challenges faced during early adulthood.
To make sense of my deepest experiences, I needed a new way of talking about the soul.
September 21, 2026, 9 AM ET Share Save W hen I was 20 years old, I started to sense a hole inside me. The feeling was utterly concrete, though the result of no medical condition that any of the various doctors I saw could identify. The hole felt like a viscous emptiness—a paradox, admittedly, as any real emptiness should have felt like nothing. This was a nothing, but its nothingness very much felt like something—and something that was growing.
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