Between The Lines #1: Meeting the Darkness

I thought if I reached back into the darkness, I’d surely die.

Even so, the gray I was living in got so hard to bear that I started to think that maybe this was death. Maybe I was death. Or maybe death was my muse, my poetic inspiration — constantly calling on me after dusk and before the dawn, making sure that I could never sleep. So, I resolved to lie down and not get back up until death and I were one. At least then I would get some peace. But as I knelt by the bed that I hoped would be my last, the darkness finally engulfed me.

I heard screams of terror. There was weeping, moaning, and gnashing of teeth, and, for a moment, I believed myself to be in hell. Until I saw myself staring back at myself and realized it was me who was screaming! I was screaming into the dark, into the void that was myself and I had never cared to listen before.

I finally reached back into the darkness and what I found was a me who had been left behind in a memory I’d never worked through. I saw myself, stuck in a cycle of abuse and abandonment — and it was me who had abandoned her!

I reached back into the darkness and found the lonesome girl who needed to heal...and I sat next to her. I offered her my shoulder, and she took it. And we cried, and we screamed, and we tore at the walls, and we cursed, and we stomped, and we beat the earth with our fists until they were bloody, and we cried again. Then I offered her my hand. And she took it. And we walked until we saw the sun again, or maybe for the first time. And we rejoiced.