Out of Nothing

"It's not by chance that the dark center of the human eye, the pupil, is actually an empty hole through which the world becomes known to us."

I read this quote by Mark Nepo this morning and it connected with this idea that I'd had the day before. that out of this brokenness is going to grow new life.
I've been thinking a lot about my life. For the past month I've been in and out of the hospital, not working or socializing very much beyond what is done behind a computer screen. My life has become this solitary thing where my entire world has narrowed to my bedroom and a hospital room. There is no remnants left behind of the girl I used to be. What is has become this cycle of grief and pain and an inability to process everything that has happened to me.
Sometimes I think the surgery that scraped my uterus clean scraped me clean as well.
there is nothing left. Just the dark center of the I.

"Like the center of the eye, both Buddhist and Zen traditions speak of the unbreakable emptiness at the heart of all seeing from which all living things emerge. the Hindu Upanishads tell us that in the center of the seed of the great nyagrodha tree there is nothing, and out of that nothing the great tree grows. We are then reminded that in our time on earth we grow like this tree - out of nothing."

It is through my emptiness, this empty hole inside of me created by Paris' death and the failings of my own body - that the world is becoming known to me. I long for what was, to go back to a time before life and death mingled inside my body, before my body became just another metaphor for death and emptiness, but I can't go back.
I was forever changed on a deep, cellular level by what happened. And the only appropriate response to such a deep change is to be deeply broken.
Right now, as the world closes in and all I can taste is this emptiness, there is still this tiny piece in me that believes that this is how the world will become known to me.
This seed of nothingness that was planted in me will grow a great tree.
I will be a great tree one day. Because of the tiny life that ripped across mine like a shooting star, leaving chaos behind with the ever strong voice of "I was here."

"Thus, all forms of prayer and meditation are aimed at keeping the center of the I empty, so the miracle of life in its grace and immensity can enter and heal us."

The emptiness is changing things. I know it. This wild brokenness is where a tree will grow and new things will emerge.
The seed was planted - Paris - and I believe the seed that was his sweet life was never meant to grow. Instead it was this tiny seed, here for only a minute before returning to nothingness, was meant to grow a great tree in me in which I can understand the miracle of life - living and dying - and the intensity of it all can complete something in me and provide healing. It is how the world will become known to me.
The struggle of the moment is to stay here in the now, in the emptiness that seems like it is all consuming, the hot pain and guilt and loneliness and second guessing and wondering and anger, and to keep breathing.

"See and feel the wood that makes up the chair next to you and resist pre-empting its presence by pronouncing it a chair."

Let is be.