Guts & Core

I remember the very first time I heard about BPD emptiness when I was talking to the psychiatrist of the ward I was staying at in 2022, how understood I felt by the sheer mention of the word “emptiness”. It felt like I was finally being given the language to describe the gut-wrenching pain that had been eating me alive for the past year. Going back to the journal entries of late 2021 and early 2022, I’d written about a sensation of something gnawing at my insides, with no idea as to where it was coming from. 

But there were other phrases I had used, too, to describe the feeling of emptiness. This article and the two illustrations are a representation of both of those sides of the emptiness coin. 

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bowels.

I am not the biggest fan of horror movies, but I absolutely adore body horror. The thematics of the human body and the symbolism of each body part is something I hold close to my heart, in both understanding the human existence and in expressing myself artistically. I was around 15 years old when I started drawing body horror illustrations for the first time, to describe the feelings of hurt and loneliness I was feeling at the time. Since starting the project in 2022, body horror has become a major focal point of my artistic expression, and it continues to influence the way I conceptualize the Pain I feel on the daily. 

In the most violent moments of living with BPD-induced emptiness, I picture myself being disemboweled. It feels like my intestines are being torn out of my body, leaving my stomach empty and bleeding internally, poisoning every bit of my malfunctioning system. I have no appetite, because I don’t have anything to digest the food with. There is nothing there left of me, nothing but the gaping hole of what used to be a person but is now only the pathetic remnants of one. 

Borderline personality disorder has left me feeling incomplete, like I never got the part that would have made me whole. That void of what should have been me is illustrated in the intestines protruding out of her body. 

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Not every moment of emptiness is as volatile and violent. Sometimes it is me sitting down in the living room of my father’s apartment, having coffee with him while talking about the Roman Empire. Sometimes it is me petting the two furbabies me and my mother have had the privilege to love for the past eight years. Sometimes it is me watching trashy American reality tv with Lover while holding their hand in mine. Sometimes it is me making art with my best friend.

shell.

Sometimes it is moments filled with happiness and purpose when I feel the most empty. And that is is a different kind of suffering. 

Medical professionals have asked me to explain the chronic emptiness I feel, because they don’t have the language or the experience to fully understand it. A lot of the times, I have used the phrase “empty shell” to describe a small smidgen of what I feel. And it is in these moments of happiness and joy when I feel that vague, nagging and hollow type of emptiness within the core of my being. It envelops me in its cold and damp blanket that is a gesture of comfort and does nothing but make me shiver and tremble. Because what do you mean I feel like there is no meaning to my existence when I am spending time with those who I love the most in this world? What do you mean the laughter of my real friends and the smile on their faces makes my heart sink because I can’t enjoy life today for what happened to me yesterday? Why am I forced into this existence that has cursed me from the moment I’d stepped into the outside world, and now even the most precious moments get tainted with the hollowness of my chest?

This etherial and almost romantic description of BPD emptiness is one that accompanies me most of the time I spend awake. It is not as much painful as it is dull and aching, like a headache that has been bothering you for the past day or two. I can live with it, but its presence in the absence of fullness is what drives me insane more times than not.

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BPD emptiness might be a symptom with no medical terminology, but art is what can describe even those things that don’t have the right words to be used for them. You might not fully get it if you haven’t experienced it yourself, but I hope these pieces made the idea of feeling empty a bit more familiar for you. I sincerely hope you don’t have to understand it.

In returning,

ichigonya