I wish I would have said that...but it wasn’t me. It was Mary Oliver. “Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”
And the only thing I take issue with is that it took years to see it as a gift. Sometimes, if you are really lucky and in tune, you can see the darkness as a gift much sooner.
I think the whole world is being handed boxes of darkness, most of us when we are very young and lack an intellectual ability to process. We make these decisions about why that particular darkness befell us, or why that particular person would ever want to give us a box full of darkness. And as little benignly self centered people, we always and forever believe that the other person’s darkness is our fault. That somehow we are to blame for the darkness and the bestowing of it upon us.
And I think for most of us, we do persist for years believing this other person’s darkness and us being gifted it is anything less than a curse, not a blessing. Some terrible shit goes down in childhood. Some awful, absolutely vile stuff. And almost every grown up child I have known, myself included, believes that the darkness is a curse and that the fact they were given it, was because they as a person, were not worth more. That somehow, some way in spite of all their innocence, the darkness was some indication of blame, a universal finger pointing that cannot be altered or amended.
And I believe it is there that darkness does the most damage. Ripping down and apart a person’s entire survival strategy. Leaving them alone to process the darkness and its life lasting consequences.
For me, it has altered the scope and trajectory of my life. It is like I became trapped in a paradigm that I could never really alter, but I could not escape either. My dark gift required that I pick the same thing over and over and over again. And while I was able to redirect myself every so often, it seems I was locked into the ultimate trajectory regardless. The redirections inaffective over time.
So today I stand in this new place, darkness looming all around. It is all I see today, not because I have forgotten what the light is for or that it exists but because I am, for the moment anyway, mired in the darkness of my own and others. And so instead of fighting it any longer, I just am being as content as I can be sitting in the blackness.
It is not comfortable. And yet, it is oddly peaceful. There are moments of abject terror where I am sure there lurks some predatory force that is going to get me. But there are many more moments where I just sit peacefully in the dark, breathing in and out, living in spite of all that might come to threaten my existence.
I think I have been afraid to sit with darkness the whole of my life. Always jumping from one thing to the next in some sort of leap frog like game whose sole purpose is to avoid the darkness. As if, I, unlike any human before me, could in fact out run the night.
But as I sit with all that swirls and turns in my mind and heart these days, I feel the darkness morphing into something else. What once was filled with terror and dread, now becomes almost comforting. I see how the darkness ran my life and because I can see that I can also now too see how it has run other’s lives as well. And while I somewhat knew this on an intellectual level the whole of my life, I was not capable of experiencing it as a feeling while still being able to maintain the mindset also.
I think much of life is being handed boxes of other people’s darkness and attempting to deny the receivable. In fact, I am absolutely sure I know people who live their entire lives this way. And then there are others of us who accept the darkness of others without any real defense. It is just always as if all darkness that befalls us already belongs to us. That we somehow have always and will always deserve only gifts of darkness from others.
I have never been entirely sure of what to do with all the darkness I have received in my life. I am sure that for a long time, and even now, in certain moments, I am sure that the darkness beckons my ending, my undoing. If I was supposed to be some other form or being, then I would have received less darkness and more light.
But I am sure today that this gift of blackness, has and always will be the gift. Because it has caused me to find the light within. It has forced me, with the very real threat of death, to work hard to ignite and maintain the eternal flame that burns within me. I have found that sometimes darkness comes with wind, and so it becomes increasingly hard to stave off. And I have lived in fear a great deal of my life that if I let the light go out, all I will ever have again is the darkness that pervades.
I know now that isn’t true.
The light exists within and always has the power to ignite itself. And its power is impervious to the laws of physics because it does not belong to this physical world, it is ethereal and other worldly.
When I find myself chastened and mired in darkness, the light is always available. Always. The only thing I need to acknowledge to access the light, is the reality that I am in fact, sitting in the dark. But if I cannot allow the darkness its dominion, then I am forever stuck beneath its reign.
What has come to me most recently with this latest gift of darkness is my job, so it would appear, is to not only ignite some source light for myself but that sometimes I am supposed to burn to light the way of some others who similarly remain quite black and still.
It is always about me finding the light. But I have learned more recently it is also about being the light for others. It isn’t just about me. It isn’t just about my fear and terror and pain. Sometimes, it is also about finding the light and burning it most brightly so that others are relieved as well.
I am grateful to see the darkness as a gift. And I am also immensely grateful to know where the light is. So when the blackness becomes overwhelmingly hard, I know where to go and what to do. I will admit, I frequently just want to sit within the darkness and curse it. And sometimes still do. But, more and more, I find I spend less time doing that and more time making the effort to allow that internal light, that effervescent grace to light my path once more.
Again...still.
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