The Dark Place

I'm going to let you in on a little secret: Despite what my carefully-manicured Facebook presence might suggest, I'm not even close to perfect. Ditto my children, my career, my marriage, even my dogs. We're all a big, beautiful mess. I have a feeling you'll be forgiving, as you may share that secret yourself.

I have another one for you. This one is harder to admit. I have Dark Places inside me. Sometimes they have names - shame, guilt, rage, fear, grief. Sometimes they're silent films replaying awful scenes. Sometimes they're just hollow silences. I don't like the Dark Places. I'm supposed to be happy! All the time! With everything! I do have an uncommonly blessed life, brimming with my aforementioned beautiful messes. I have an endless gratitude list. And I am grateful. What business do I have with Dark Places?

But here's the thing: the Dark Places exist in the midst of the bliss. The two aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, the more practiced I become at this life thing, the more I realize the two are symbiotic. Without the Dark Places, we couldn't possibly appreciate the bliss.

I haven't always had this sage Mother Willow outlook, however. In fact, for years (okay, decades) I fought to deny my Dark Places entirely. Anger? What anger? Grief? Don't be silly! I'm a wife and a mother and a teacher! I volunteer and go to church every Sunday! I bake cookies for my neighbors! I starve until my organs start to fail and I have to be hospitalized! Oh wait. That last one snuck up on me. It appears there's a cost to denying the Dark Places. In running from them - in denying the emotions and the trials and the unmet needs - I strangled my own humanity.

I don't know about you, but my Dark Places refuse to be silenced. I can try to hide, try to distract with work or good deeds or nice clothes, try to bury my head in the sand, but still the dark seeps in. It pops up in my dreams. It shortens my temper. It fuels my eating disorder. The harder I push against it, the more aggressive it becomes. Sort of like those Chinese finger traps. Panic and yank, you're stuck. Slow and steady, though, and you're out.

Hm. That's a thought. Instead of denying the Dark Places, what would happen if we picked up lanterns, grabbed a pal, and explored them? "On my left, I see anxiety about health problems. Up ahead at three o'clock there's a memory of a man who took what wasn't his. Wow, it really is dark in here. I'm glad you're with me. Let's keep going." Just as I'd take a preschooler's hand and show her the harmlessness of her closet, I can open my own mind and see that its shadows are far scarier than what's actually there.

Here's the thing: I am who I am because of where I've been and where I choose to go from here. Those Dark Places? They've given me the gifts of resilience, empathy, endurance, compassion, and patience. I can visit my Dark Places from time to time. I can turn on Tori Amos and curl into a ball and tend to my 14-year old self. I can turn on Eminem and hurl ice at the concrete and curse the evils of the world. I can call my grandma and ask her to sing me a song. Then I can pick myself up, brush myself off, and head back into the light, stronger for the time I spent in the dark. I can roll down a grassy hill with my kids AND read Sylvia Plath. I can laugh at nothing with my husband AND remember things that hurt. I have light and darkness within me, as we all do, and my darkness only serves to make my light shine that much brighter.

Sometimes I'm still afraid of my Dark Places. The other day when I heard someone deride the #metoo movement as a witch hunt, I froze, retreated, pretended that it wasn't me, too. I hid from the dark. But it WAS me, too, and I don't need to be afraid anymore. I'm still here, a fallible, vulnerable human being, standing tall with my face to the sky. And I have hope.