The Darkness

I am not sure on somedays where the darkness comes from but on days like today it descends like a heavy blanket covering my soul. Actually its more like a spider’s net of dark that comes down…I wake feeling twisted in trauma and fighting like hell to get free. I awake to the sense of dark memories and associations that have surrounded me after days and days of rain where I couldnt touch base with nature that is the great purifier of my body and soul.

By mid day it has taken just over 3 hours to wake and shower and dress.  I havent been able to manage food. In this time I faced the challenge of calling the Endodontist about the appointment to see the results of a scan they failed to call me back about three times.  After this call the tears started to fall like rain.  I notice I am back in the deepest pool of wintery sadness that I thought I had left behind and then I realise its something I will  always carry.

I remember as the tears fall to speak words of empathy and validation to my innner child.  I think of all she has endured in this life.  Of the smashed open teeth and bloody tongue lacerated from the 79 crash.  Of the agony of three lots of dental reconstruction.  Of the brutality I suffered at the hands of my ex when in the middle of the night I stayed locked in the bathroom with the pain, terrified if I woke him to be punished andyelled at and how that happened anyway during the last lot of reconstruction 6 years ago.  I remind myself of the courage it took to make that call today.

In the shower today pain and rage as I looked down at my misshappen left breast turned grey from weeks of radiation.  I realise the rage holds back tne tears that later fell, but the anger over my lost health is real : is another emotional scar.   Realisation despite all of this I must love and nurture this scarred body with all my heart.

Some sign of growth today : No terrorist voice beating me up only these words I hear.  “Treat yourself tenderly today..you are feeling raw, baby go gently.” This makes me cry, this softness from me.  What if I just didnt struggle today? What if I just let myself rest gently here and expressed all I was feeling in my blog? What if I just let myself cry free of the nasty invalidating voices of my ex amd society mocking me and accusing me of being a drama queen? And so that is what I do on this dark day. It brings me comfort.  I realise i dont know how to really nurture myself well but I can learn.

In the midst of blog writing my therapist calls me back.  My grief opens again ss I share the sadness I feel and felt yesterday when I had news of how my brother is over working.  I think of how he lost his Dad too at a critical time of how he absorbed the migrants curse of running from poverty to seek security in riches, of how seldom we really connect and of how I long to.  But of how difficult it really would be to connect him from this deeper level.  More tears.

Sometimes it feels to me that darkness is gathering on our planet.  That nature is sending up all these storms and this much rain in order to send us back within to ask what havoc we as a species are wreeking on this planet.  And then I think it is all projection and that any stage we all can make the loving nurturing choice even in the midst of all this pain, how by feeling and acknowledging it we can emerge and learn valuable lessons of what heals.

The darkness will not always cover me I know that from experience.  But today it does and today in facing it I have honoured deep truths, difficult as they are.  And I can remember that there is light too that I can reach for.  It is found through love.