Table 2 Metaphors for the experience of feeling chronically empty

219,064

So, I guess, emptiness is like an overcast day where it’s − but it’s a chill on the wind, but it’s not aggressively windy. Um, it’s just, you know, you can’t get warm, um, and you can’t, sort of, find a nice warm spot everywhere you go, whether it’s, like, out in the open, or under, you know, not being under a tree or anything. It’s just like, just like constantly cold. But it’s not raining or miserable weather. It’s just sort of overcast and a bit chilly.

219,065

It’s just your kind of very robotic and very, like − there is no meaning or purpose, I guess, would be my definition of it.

219,074

Oh dear, it’s a black hole… Um, but I guess it’s that drowning, you know, drowning.

219,088

It’s like wind inside a tin can… like you’re the tin can.

229,070

Um, um… Mmm. Like a stone that hasn’t been shaped into a rock.

259,029

Um, nothingness. Nothingness as in no sense of being. Um - - - like, I suppose, like, with the cosmos, like a black hole or something. I suppose, like, um, there’s no sense of time. What do you call it? You know how the astronauts, when you see them walking around in space and there’s no gravity? That sense. The sense of not being able – the sense of not, of no, of no – the sense of weightlessness probably or – I don’t know, I don’t know.

259,090

Um, I suppose like just a depressing, empty swimming pool. Like a concrete swimming pool with, like, a little bit of water and lots of mould… Yeah. Like not one that people skate in.