The Un-Place: A Perpetual Avoidance

What place in the world do you never want to visit? Why?

The place I never want to visit? It isn’t marked on any map, doesn’t register on a seismograph, casts no shadow under a hypothetical sun. You won’t find its coordinates in any atlas, nor hear its whispers carried on any prevailing wind. It exists, or rather, it is, a negative space carved out of the very fabric of being, a void where potential goes to curdle and dreams are embalmed in formaldehyde silence.

I see it sometimes, in the periphery of a thought, a flicker at the edge of a feeling. You might glimpse it too, if you stare too long into the mirror of your own anxieties, that place where the music stops mid-note and the laughter decays into a dry, rattling echo.

They say every heart has its hidden chamber, a vault for the things it cannot bear. Mine, I suspect, opens onto this un-place, this territory of utter absence.

It smells faintly of dust and regret, a scent so subtle it almost escapes detection, yet it clings to the inside of your nostrils like a phantom limb. You wouldn’t notice it at first, perhaps, drawn in by the deceptive stillness, the promise of respite from the relentless clamor of the world.

But then, the silence would begin to press in. Not the comforting silence of a snow-covered forest, or the pregnant hush before a storm. This is a silence that has swallowed all sound, digested every vibration, leaving behind only a hollow ache in the eardrums.

I imagine walking there, though the very act of imagining feels like a trespass. My feet would sink into a ground that isn’t quite solid, a shifting terrain of forgotten intentions and unsaid words. You might feel it too, that sense of your own weight becoming a burden, each step an effort against an invisible resistance.

They say the air there is thick with the weight of what never was.

Opportunities missed, paths not taken, loves unspoken. You could reach out and almost touch them, these spectral possibilities, shimmering just beyond your grasp, forever out of reach.

It’s not a place of torment, not in the traditional sense. There are no flames, no chains, no weeping figures writhing in agony. Its horror is far more insidious, a slow, creeping paralysis of the soul.

You might try to speak, to break the oppressive silence, but your voice would be swallowed by the void, the sound dissolving before it even forms on your lips. I can almost feel the frustration rising, the desperate urge to make some kind of mark, to prove that you still exist within this nothingness.
They say time doesn’t flow there.

Moments stretch into eons, and eons collapse into fleeting instants, leaving you perpetually disoriented, adrift in a sea of temporal ambiguity. You wouldn’t know if you’d been there for a minute or a millennium, the very concept of duration losing all meaning.

I picture the landscape, if it can be called that. A flat, featureless expanse stretching to an invisible horizon. No trees, no mountains, no rivers, no sky. Just an endless, monotonous grayness that seems to leach the color from your very being.

You might try to find your way out, to escape this suffocating emptiness, but there are no landmarks, no signposts, no discernible direction. Every step leads to the same indistinguishable nothingness. I feel the panic rising in my chest just thinking about it, the claustrophobia of open space.

They say the inhabitants of this place, if they can be called that, are the ghosts of unfulfilled potential. Not screaming specters, but pale, listless figures drifting aimlessly, their eyes vacant, their movements slow and lethargic. You might see them too, these echoes of what could have been, a silent testament to the dreams that withered and died.

I would never want to visit this place because it represents the ultimate form of stagnation, the antithesis of growth and change. It is the graveyard of possibility, where the vibrant energy of life is slowly extinguished. You might feel the same way, a primal aversion to the idea of being trapped in a state of perpetual non-being.

They say that once you enter this place, a part of you remains there forever. A sliver of your soul, a fragment of your consciousness, trapped in that eternal stillness. I fear that more than any physical pain, the idea of leaving a part of myself behind in such a desolate void.

You might argue that such a place doesn’t exist, that it’s merely a figment of my imagination, a manifestation of my deepest fears. And perhaps you’re right. But the feeling remains, this visceral aversion to the idea of a place where nothing ever happens, where potential goes to waste, and where the very essence of life seems to fade away into an endless gray.

I prefer the chaos, the noise, the messy, unpredictable beauty of the real world, with all its imperfections and its heartaches. Because even in the midst of suffering, there is still the possibility of joy, the potential for growth, the flicker of hope that keeps us moving forward.

You might find solace in stillness, a refuge in silence. But for me, the silence of that un-place is deafening, the stillness suffocating. I need the rhythm of life, the ebb and flow of energy, the constant hum of existence to feel truly alive.

They say that confronting our fears is the key to overcoming them. But this fear, this aversion to that particular void, feels too fundamental, too deeply ingrained in the fabric of my being. It’s not a fear to be conquered, but a boundary to be respected, a place to be actively avoided.

I will choose the vibrant cacophony of a bustling marketplace over the dead silence of that un-place. I will choose the unpredictable beauty of a stormy sea over the monotonous grayness of that empty horizon. I will choose the messy, complicated reality of human connection over the solitary confinement of that desolate void.

You might have your own version of this un-place, a personal territory of dread and aversion. Perhaps it’s a memory you can’t escape, a fear that paralyzes you, a regret that haunts your waking hours. Whatever it is, I hope you never have to visit it, never have to experience the suffocating emptiness that I imagine residing in that place I never want to see.

They say that even in the darkest of places, there is always a glimmer of light. But in the place I never want to visit, the light itself seems to have been extinguished, leaving behind only an eternal, unbroken darkness. And that, more than anything, is why I will always turn my back on that silent, empty horizon.