There are times when I feel like saying (or typing) the same thing repeatedly. Now is one of those times.

It’s really the beginning of a sentence; the prelude to a complete thought, but it never gets to the point. It never finishes, and it is not the complete thought itself. It is just an abortive notion.

“There is nothing…. There is nothing… There is nothing… There is nothing… “

Even as I think of other things, or as I type, it’s still tumbling around in my mind, slipping between more important things, bouncing off the places I store the things I’m trying to forget, resting momentarily atop the things of which I should be thinking.

I wonder what it means.

Is there a point where I’m trying to go, but don’t have the courage? Perhaps it wants to complete itself and I won’t let it.

Or maybe it has no ending; an unfinished thought. But a stubborn one. It should be discarded, but refuses.

“There is nothing… There is nothing… There is nothing… “

It’s a mild madness, this obsession with an unfinished statement.

There is nothing…WHAT?!

It would be easy to tidy everything by saying “There is nothing.” is all there is to it. It would be so simple. “There is nothing.” Yup. There we go. Nice and neat. No mess here. Well, perhaps a bit angst-ridden and pessimistic.

There are those who would say that’s exactly what the thought is meant to be in my mind. “It’s you, Joy.” they would say. “You’re so melancholy. You like being depressed. Of course you would say ‘There is nothing’.”

They would be wrong. I am realistic. I don’t like disappointment, so I avoid it as best I can… but I always hope for the best. I am, in fact, incurably optimistic, else I’d have found a way out of this existence long ago. I am also stubborn. Cop-outs are for the weak.

So what does this plaguing little phrase mean? Where is it going?

“There is nothing…”

I can think of a few endings to this… “There is nothing I want more.” True. I know what this references. But this isn’t where this phrase is leading. This is already established.

“There is nothing more I want.” Not true. I want a great deal more.

“There is nothing I can do.” There is always something I can do, always a choice, even if I don’t much care for the choices.

“There is nothing I can say.” That needs even more tacked on the end to be true. “There is nothing I can say that would do any good.” That works. Too long, though, and I’m quite sure that’s not where my mind wants to go.

Shall I Google it and see if someone else has said what my mind thinks it wants to say?

Hmmm… interesting results:

-A cd by Foo Fighters “There Is Nothing Left to Lose”

-A book “There Is Nothing Wrong with You : Going Beyond Self-Hate” … I have to giggle. I should read this, maybe?

-What looks like a few blogs with catchy “There is nothing…” phrases, or titles.

-Ooo… an entry on psych central that says “There is nothing deep about depression.” I’d have to disagree, of course. Depression can be very deep; deep enough that you can’t swim to the surface by yourself.

-Apparently Bill Gates said, somewhere, somewhen, “There is nothing monolithic about chaos.” Sounds interesting, and maybe in an alternate life I might be tempted to find out what he was talking about, but that’s just not helping me here.

-”There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Possible.

-There’s Nothing Sexier Than a . . . Nursing Mom? Interesting article. Definitely not where I was going, but interesting nonetheless.

-Another blog… “There is nothing to see here.” We bloggers are so smug in our ‘individuality’, when we’re really all quite average, not at all exceptional. We’re like the goths and punks and anyone else that’s ‘different’ trying to stand out from the crowd by being EXACTLY LIKE everyone else that dresses, looks, and acts like them. Nothing idividual about that. (I’m talking about people who WANT to be different, but haven’t realized that it’s about being who you are, rather than being a certain way.)

Alright, “There is nothing…” from Google that’s going to help me.

So I’ll just spend my day with that flopping around my brain. “There is nothing… There is nothing… There is nothing…”

Maybe it’ll get tired and die. Maybe all the pinging and bouncing and flopping is just the death throes of malformed, unviable thought. It should never have been born, it can’t survive…

Maybe.