Do you find throughout your life the emotional side often is left with a big "vacancy"?  Are you sometimes feeling like a motel, renting out your heart and/or body to the person who seem to show up at your neediest and you are content to have the vacancy filled even for a night?  Did you find sometimes this one night turns into a decade or longer? Often the fear of not having a clear plan for your life often leads us to accept something less than we had hoped or planned for.  

When a lover becomes unloved, a job is over, a house is sold/taken away, a child or spouse leaves you or dies, all of these leave an emotional vacancy in our emotional well-being.   How do we fill those vacancies?

I wondered about this myself.  I have had some pretty large vacancies in a very short period of time.  How had I handled them?  

I realize I haven't spoken about my son lately.  The reason is because we have settled on a kind of steady relationship for now.  It's filling emotional vacancies for both of us.  I examined our relationship awhile back deciding if I expected it to be different the difference would have to be with me, how I approached our relationship, or what was left of it.

 It hasn't been easy.  I took tentative steps deciding I would use my newfound ability to draw to communicate messages to him, rather than beat a dead horse with words he would not hear.  The drawings were not always subtle, but they were always colorful.  He appreciated them, and told me other inmates looked forward to his "mail calls".  I liked doing something personal for him, he had to know I spent my time doing them only for him.

©Sheila 2010

©Sheila 2010

©Sheila 2010

©Sheila 2011 

©Sheila 1011 

 I was filling three emotional vacancies with my art, my grieving, his loss of freedom, and bridging our own relationship gap.  There are probably more, but these are the most relevant to this writing.

 I filled another emotional gap with my desire to not go life alone.  Oh I tried it for awhile, but frankly when you have had a partner to talk, laugh, travel, cry and whisper with, it just isn't fun to live life alone.  Heck, I lost my son (physically) just a few months after my husband.  

©Sheila 2010 

I reached out at midnight.  Odd how we do that.  Sitting alone with just the glare of a lone light from bedside nightstand, I can remember filling out hours of forms then taking a picture with my computer.  I was wrapped in a black cashmere robe, not a stitch of makeup on andam sure I attempted to not look as forlorn, abandoned and tired as I felt.  This would be the photo I put on the E-Harmony © site. This would be the photo which spoke for me and ultimately gathered the few responses I had.

The midnight picture. 

I immediately narrowed them down by the answers I received when I responded with three questions to them.  How?  Well, I was not attracted to any of them by their photos alone, I'd just lost a movie star handsome husband.  I was unconcerned with their looks.  Their sense of humor and compassion came first, spelling was second (really? Yeah.), and the ability to write in cohesive sentences.  Those were the initial tests for me.  Simple enough.  When you throw out the stuff that doesn't matter you are left with the core of a person.

Paul filled this bill perfectly.  I got lucky though, I could have dated a few or many men and never found love.  I had filled enough emotional vacancies in my life (both mine and theirs) to know what I needed.  I never intended to go with what I wanted, those things are pie in the sky to search for.  He had patience and the intelligence to wait for my fog to lift.  To really fill the vacancy those other things will come with the things we really need.