I've had a void inside of me for a very long time. If left unchecked, it can easily consume me and send me spiraling into dark, terrible places that I never want to visit but have been regularly forced into due to poor brain chemistry. It's been doing this as long as I can remember and it's only within the last few years that I learned ways to keep it in check to prevent myself from being consumed. But even if it isn't actively destructive, it's still a source of pain. It still burns and even a small boil over can be deeply painful.
It didn't start this way though. It started as just a desire. A core desire for something that I've long known I needed in order to be the ideal version of myself. But as the years went on without any way to fulfill that desire, I tried other things to see if I could feed it. All it did was consume them while growing more voracious. Not only could I not find other ways to fill it, everything I tried made it worse. Until eventually it grew so large it broke me.
It took a long time to rebuild after that. Often because what I'd built was weak and easily destroyed the next time it spilled out. It wasn't until I started therapy that I finally learned how to build up in ways that could withstand it and then eventually contain it. But containment doesn't mean it's gone. It just means I've learned to live with it. I've found ways to live knowing it is unlikely to ever be quelled, but those ways will never be that idealized version I dreamt of as a teenager. I don't think that person or even a version of them will ever exist. Because I've learned to live with that void, but it cost me the ability to imagine a life without it.