Your Darkness is Not Your Curse

Photo taken by yours truly @Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, Abu Dhabi - October 2019

I told myself that everything good takes time, but I don't know how much I believed it. I stepped forward into the light and tried to forget the darkness of my past experiences, but a bulge of darkness walked with me

After a year plus of growing and healing and therapy and books and running and prayers still they come. And yes, all of those tools have helped. As have tears. Tears help a lot actually. Yes, there are times in a bottle and there have been time trying to cut it free. The specific are not relevant. Or perhaps they're just a bridge too far for me to share right now. But in case it might be useful to know they exist at all, know that they do. My smile is chosen not unburdened. 

So many ways I have sought to silence this darkness in me, to satisfy this gaping hole. There are books upon books. Yes, the kind that you would expect but for me more powerfully there are books bu other people who are boxed and labelled too. 

I don't know how much is too much to share. I do know I must tell. If it's useful at all, that I give you permission to have darkness. You are not broken because you have darkness. You are not "other" because you have darkness. You are not flawed or doing this wrong because you have hunger, because you have lonely. You are not broken because this human experience is hard. And amazing. And awful. And magnificent.

I remember feeling sadness in my heart for a very long time. I've lost a lot of people in my life, I've drag myself back up every time I have experienced sorrow and hardships. I've learned a lot these last couple of years. Sometimes you just have to leave everything in Allah swt.

The constant self-talks that flutter from one end of your reflection in the mirror, the fake smiles, followed by an 'I am okay, really', to your careful friends with worry in their eyes. I take each step, as though I have shackles around my ankles, and I don't find anyone other than the distant hum of my own heart telling me to keep going, to keep fighting

These days I am convinced that most of the answers are right. Prayer works, meditation works, therapy works, medicine works (sometimes), running definitely works, crying, books, yoga, being with other people, being in solitude, and on and on. I am convinced that they all work and that none of them do. At least not a way that creates a forever state of light. 

I am convinced at the heart of it is me becoming conscious enough and willing enough to allow myself the darkness. That the more I am willing to be with that darkness the more that darkness will teach me about me. It will teach me about life. My darkness is directing me to the places within and without where I am not telling the truth to myself about what I want from life and who I want to be in life. Through the harsh language of contrast, the darkness is directing me to my joy.   

I am convinced that sometimes, sometimes I am depressed because I am depressed. I am unhappy because I am unhappy. My darkness directs me there. it is what I do next that makes it a gift or a potential catastrophic curse. Increasingly and uncomfortably I am more joyfully embracing the gift that it brings. 

Sometimes we make mistakes, we lose people we love, we hurt and we feel like nothing is going right for us. We hurt ourselves and sometimes end up we hurting others, we go through pain and we grow from it

Yes, I am feeling healing, always. But that healing is now more about my own willingness to be honest with myself and to then shorten the distance between that honesty and the boldness of my action. Darkness and light are such a loving couple when I let them be. And so maybe I am or maybe I'm not positive, inspiring, and wise. At the very least, just maybe, this will reach someone like me, isn't keeping it a secret exactly but living it secretly. And maybe, just maybe you'll hear me saying you and I are not broken. You are exactly who and where you're supposed to be.