Letters to Life

The Hollow Spark

September 10, 2025

I’ve lost the soul of life.

It isn’t something I can prove, only something I know. An ache that I feel deep in my bones. A knowing that rings louder than logic. I have lost the spark. And though I feel it as clearly as the sky is blue, it makes no sense at all.

Because by every measure, I should be whole.

I have a home I poured myself into. A husband who loves me in all my forms, just as I love him. Four beautiful dogs and a mischievous cat who fill the house with life. A career that pays well. A business of my own that is thriving, something I dreamed of since I was young. Brick by brick, I built this life into everything I wanted it to be. And yet, somehow, the soul of it has slipped through my fingers.

Lately, I’ve been circling this emptiness like a sound you cannot place. A hunger I cannot satisfy. A thirst I cannot quench. I keep reaching for meaning, but my hands come back empty every time.

It isn’t in the audiobooks and podcasts I use to fill the silence.
It isn’t in the next Amazon purchase arriving on my doorstep, promising happiness.
It isn’t in the scroll of social media, or the hollow applause of likes and comments to my posts.
It isn’t in the glasses raised, the crowded tables, the calendar crammed with things to do.

I fill every moment. And still, I feel empty.

The quiet has become unbearable. Not peaceful, but heavy, like a room without windows, airless and endless. I eat not with joy, but with habit, all while thinking I should eat less. I force myself into the gym not for health but to look the way I am supposed to. I work not for purpose but to pay the bills I’ve collected in pursuit of something I cannot achieve. And I find myself reaching for drinks or smoke, not for pleasure, but to blur the sharpness of knowing something is missing. My body aches with fatigue. My mind is restless. My soul feels starved.

And suddenly, it all makes sense.

This world is no longer built for the soul. It is built for distraction. For the wheel that never stops turning. For the illusion of happiness while we are hollow underneath. Time slips too quickly, faster every day, and still we beg it to move faster, just to get through.

It all makes sense.

I don’t yet know how to change it. But I do know this: the moment I named the loss, something stirred. A flicker, fragile but steady. The first spark of inspiration in a long time appeared, and it whispered: find me again.

To find the soul of life.

And maybe naming that loss is, for now, the beginning.