The holes that people make

Every thing has a shape, then that shape shapes us.

Our life has edges and contours that are moulded to the world around us and to the things that live in it. We fit to their shape by changing ours — like a hand moulding to a mug handle.

When something familiar is not there any more, the world changes shape. But we — for a while, at least — keep ours. There’s a mismatch. There’s a hole in the world. And the shape of the hole is a perfect negative of the thing gone, a kind of ungraspable form of the thing itself — like when you expect a step, but it was removed, and your foot goes straight into the void it left. Or you reach out for a cup that was there before, and your hand grasps the air where it was.

The same happens with people. Their lives have a shape, and we shape our lives to fit theirs. That’s how two lives become one. The contours of your life fit the contours of theirs — like a jigsaw puzzle, or a handshake, or a hug. But when they’re gone, they leave a hole. And your life is still the same shape, but the life it fits to isn’t there any more — when your contours reach out expecting to make contact, they embrace the air where the person was.

The hole is an absence: it’s made of what’s not there. But that absence is a kind of presence: it’s an ungraspable form of the thing itself. As long as we never change our shape, then in some inverted way the person, by not being there, is there.

I’m not sure if the holes that people make ever close up. I’m not sure if they should. If the hole never closes, then our shape will always be fitted to a thing which can’t be grasped. But if it does, we would be a different shape to before, and our life would have forgotten their life — like when someone forgets that the step was there to begin with, and forgets that it is even missing — and then whatever presence was found in absence is lost.

Maybe we shouldn’t be quick to close up the holes that people leave in us. But the thought is a strange one: that a person can be shaped by the holes that other people have made, that people make holes and those holes make up people, that everyone carries with them the people who have shaped them.