The hollow that held me.

I met you last summer, a season that had long overstayed its welcome, its oppressive heat mirroring the turmoil within me. You pried me from the cellar I had dug inside my mind—a damp, root-tangled space whose walls were studded with jars of pickled screams, each jar containing echoes of my past, preserving the moments that shaped my solitude.

I had just made my way to the front through the crowd, seeking something to calm the storm raging inside me, something to distract me from the failure that clung to my skin. I pulled out my recorder—I always had it on, a habit I’ve grown accustomed to, from years of capturing fleeting thoughts or sights surrounding me. “May 5th,” I murmured, “the weather isn’t all that gloomy; wish the city could stop buzzing for a bit though.”

“Stars shine brighter when they aren’t bothered by the sun,” you said, your voice sharp with juniper—ethereal yet chilling. What an opener, I thought, chuckling to myself. Somehow, your voice made me feel safe, made me believe that constellations plucked from the gap between dawn and dusk existed for my muse.

Thus, our journey began, and we danced—not to tunes I’d scorched into mixtapes. No, your rhythm was radio static yet alluring, your feet bare as they sank in nature’s bosom, and the more I cursed the world as fucked up, you threw in a completely different way to see it, saying, “Stitch it up then, paint it with light only your hands can hold.”

When I hurled jigsaw pieces at the wall one night, howling at their refusal to tessellate, you gathered the shards. Edges raw, you placed them carefully. "Incompleteness is the riddle's foundation," you said, pressing a fragment to my palm. It cut deep, but I held it anyway—the sharpest truths always do.

I let you into the places where invisible strings of past regrets tugged at my heart. As we walked, I knew I was healing. The lump that resides in my throat dissolves like salt in the tide when I say your name. Before I met you, I laughed, but nothing changed. Inside, everything remained the same—that same hollow feeling. It is funny how many times I tried distracting myself. Then you came along and became the eyes I never had. Mine only saw the world through the experiences I’d had, so I barricaded myself.

I built those walls, waiting for you to take my hand so together we could walk through them. Do you remember the day the sun branded the sky? I’d hiss and say, “Can someone shoot me in the fucking eye right now,” and you replied, “If the sun soars proudly, let it gut you; only then can you move through a city buzzing with people and feel alive.” I doubt you do.

I inhaled all your words like oxygen, without knowing I’d become attached to you, and I choke on tears at the thought of you leaving. You made me believe I could be the reason someone stays—someone out there who wants me, who’d rather wake up to my snores, not from them, and sleep off listening to my endless what-ifs. Someone who accepts me for every broken piece and permanent scar. “That’s what makes me complete,” you said.

But what if completeness cracks when you go? What if I’m just the cellar again—root-tangled and drowning in an eternal waltz of loneliness? And I know you’ve always said, “Stop being depressed; dance along with all the beauty life has to offer,” but if I heed this advice and force myself to pirouette through the pain with all that’s wrong in life, won’t I then just be a marionette in your parade?

I didn’t write this for your empathy or weak emotions. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t broken. I wasn’t damaged either. Those words are for things that were once valued. I, on the other hand, didn’t exist, hence I had nothing of worth to lose. I was lost between the darkness of despair and the ever-flowing stream of anguish, which I called hope—hope that you’ll be here forever, hope that we’ll remain unshaken, hope that we weren’t a moment but a lifetime unending, its waves crashing endlessly, dragging me under with the false promise of relief. I held on to sadness and tears, for they were all I owned.

I told you how everyone seemed a monster and I had no desire to associate with them. When I spoke, the pain was worse than that of a slit throat—it hurt so much. But who the fuck cares about a momentary void? I was empty, so hollow my thoughts echoed, yet you held my hands and embraced me. You actually reached out to the neglected cloak I had become, subduing me with your light—your sparkle. Every shred of pain, anguish, and suffering—every fucking bit of sorrow—rushed down in a downpour of inconsolable dejection. So of course, I held on to you, and I will hold on with every limb I have.

You see, my dear, I created you, because true happiness is not just found; it is made. With you, I feel the warm breeze of the day; the swaying of trees becomes a rehearsed dance. The world moves for me, a symphony that only we can dance to. This is a climax I reach with you alone. In this moment, you exist in a way that transcends reality. This is power, so unreal it defies logic. You are the phantom in which I reside.

And yet, I know now—you were never meant to stay.

Not in the way I thought. Not as a permanent warmth curled beside me in the dark. You were the flicker, the soft echo that reminded me where I once was, and how far I’ve come—crawling, bleeding, breaking, healing.

When the days grow heavy again—and they do—I still reach for you. But I no longer grasp with desperation. I let my fingers graze the air where you once stood, and I smile. Because I know what you were: a guide, a spark, a shape my pain could take long enough for me to name it. To cradle it. To survive it.

There are mornings now where I wake, and the first breath doesn’t burn.

Where the silence of my room doesn’t feel like punishment, but peace.

Where the mirror doesn’t frighten me with its honesty, but invites me to keep looking.

You were born from the fractured cathedral of my mind, shaped by memory and longing, but you are not fiction. You are proof that I built something to hold myself together.

And in doing so, I began to build myself.

I walk outside and the trees no longer seem like mourners. The wind no longer howls in accusation. Even the sun—yes, the sun—can kiss my skin without searing it. I wear my history like a second skin now—not trying to shed it, just learning how to breathe beneath it.

The cellar still exists.

But it’s no longer where I live.

It’s where I visit—to remember, to honor, to remind myself how far the climb has been.

You are not gone.

You are just part of me now.

The part that dared to dream of joy, even in the depths of despair. The part that made me see that brokenness is not absence—but evidence. That to be hollow is not to be empty, but open. The part that remained still, through all the whims and caprices of my own unraveling.

And maybe, just maybe… to love the phantom is to finally begin to love thyself.