The Respect For Darkness.
I would like to present my case for respecting the darkness.
Remember that weird girl in school? The one with the spider earrings and the black band shirts. She was kind of moody and missed school a lot. She was always cracking jokes and making everyone laugh but inside she was fighting the battle of a lifetime. That was me.
There is no way to fully describe the dark side for those who have never been there. Let me give it my best try: It is gloomy and lonely. While others around me were playing sports and finding their gifts and talents I was barely scraping by in school and obsessed with dying. I felt like I lived in a world with an excess gravity. Everything seemed harder for me to accomplish, impossible really. Every interaction felt like a burden and drained me of every drop of energy. I was trapped in an unwanted life where I languished. Miserable, I felt judged and misunderstood. My mother would ask what was so horrible about my life. I could only think to explain it as "what is so great"? Her love of life seemed naive. The bits of joy that sometimes happened along just seemed unbalanced to the fact that life is hard. My mind emphasized work, struggling and how I spent most of my time in agonizing worry. Then after years of that drudgery I was going to just die.
It shocked me, years later, to read that they have found that PTSD is perhaps created by our inability to cope with trauma when we feel isolated and unsupported. This concept is commonly demonstrated when servicemen begin suffering after their return to everyday life. Although their family and friends love them they cannot easily empathize with their feelings. They have no one anymore who really understands what they have experienced.
Could something as simple as empathy and support be the cure to such a devastating issue?
I can assure you that voyaging into the darkness of depression is not a choice. There is no draw to make anyone decide to go in and set up residence. I stumbled in quite accidentally at the age of 13 after my friend was murdered. I got abducted by the darkness without even knowing it had overtaken me. There was no warning to let me know that suddenly my mind had shifted. My thoughts had just suddenly become bleak and hopeless- it is not like I realized my thoughts were abnormal from who i had been before... They were still just thoughts in my head. My mind had changed but it was still my mind. I was unable to detect any difference.
For my closest friends and family it was confusing and even frustrating. It looked as though I had willfully abandoned them and that I had the choice to simply come back out. I had one friend who accused me of just wanting attention and I was completely taken aback as that was inconceivable to me. It was painful and alienating to be so incomparable to everyone that they could even come up with such a motivation. I had truly become completely removed from everything and everyone.
Now, before I have you believing that darkness is all bad and has no merit, let me tell you what it gave to me...
It was a slow recovery that was similar to digging myself out of a grave. Over time and with a lot of talking, explaining my darkness to my mom and getting professional help, I began to experience some feeling again. We painstakingly exhumed my soul from the dread, fear, hurt, sadness and grief. It took years but I finally emerged, much changed.
I knew I had recovered when like a sunrise dawning-a vista of brightness and euphoria began to appear before me. Like never before there was a brilliance to existence. My eyes could see and my mind could process... there was light. I began to see happiness even in the mundane. There was excitement and hope. I now had people and places I wanted to explore and appreciate.
There was another new appreciation that had developed. I had a real love in my heart for those hurt and struggling. I was drawn to people who were suffering and able to resonate with the depth of their agony. I had been there, I had known it too.
The dark side has definitely left it's mark on me. It is the easy understanding of others who are so lost in misery and feel totally isolated from every person in their life. I can hold space for them. I know it is heard when I tell them over and over, I am here and I will be right here as long as you need me to be, even when it seems it is doing no good.
Even 20 years later I still feel like a beacon to those lost in their
darkness. I am the living proof that there is possibility of liberation
from it's hold.
I celebrate the time I spent in darkness now I know that what almost killed me- instead has made me wiser. My time in the dark has become my gift. It keeps me soft and kind and serves forever as a contrast that allows me to see, and help others find, just how truly resplendent living can be.
A Poem-
The darkest dread is that of fear -and of the unknown,
The deepest pain released in tears, as my depression grows,
That sinking lonely feeling, the hurt cannot be told,
Rearing it's ugly head and crushing me in it's hold,
It tears me from my family- pushes my love down deep inside,
It steals my every moment and belittles me with lies,
This monster dwells within me- it never takes a leave,
It hides amongst the shadows and descends like a disease,
There must be a way to kill it, surely there is a cure,
I must find a way of escaping- not much more can I endure.
Written on 11/5/1991
In the midst of my deepest darkness. I was 17 years old.
