You can be anyone in the dark. You can be hotter, thinner, a better version of yourself. Without the light’s irritatingly revealing truths, darkness provides a safety that light eradicates.
I write in the dark daily. Perhaps this is why. Perhaps it is because I feel safer in the dark. The thoughts that come and launch themselves onto my page. Perhaps the darkness allows me to access those parts of myself I might be too ashamed to own in broad daylight. Or hell even thin day light.
And even though I can be anyone in this dark solitude, I do not indulge. No, instead I take full advantage of darkness’ safety and tap out my heart and soul. It is within this cover of darkness I find the bravery to go on. To own that which is mine.
Currently there is a pack of coyotes yelping and scrambling outside my accommodations. They are moving about in the cover of night, calling to each other, informing each other of where there are people, where there are prey, and perhaps how soon daylight will reveal all the things that darkness does not.
The firefighters remain on the mountain. Still fighting the seeming tiny fires everywhere. I know though it is only distance that makes them small. I am sure those red blazes burn brightly and are larger than they appear. I wish I could drive up and get a closer look. I feel the pull of fire...constantly.
But it is here in the shade of every day I come to touch in with myself. To have coffee, alone in the shroud. To contemplate myself and you and love and living. It is not how I ever intended to begin the day. My younger years, mornings were always for recovering from the night before...or missed all together.
It has only been in the last 10 years where mornings belonged to me. A gift of being single and alone. Time each day to reflect and examine the life I am living. The how, the whys, the what ifs. And I am really not sure I could do it without all the absence of Illumination. I find such safety in things being covered, unrevealed by the light. I need the light just as much as I need the darkness. My spirit full of energetic beams. But as with most things, I need the balance of no light to ensure I fully appreciate the sun.
I sat last night in a stone tub beneath The Milky Way. I watched as shooting stars sailed across a night time sky. The immediate horizon dotted with tiny embers burning everywhere. There was no sound. There was only space, and time and me.
I laid in the tub until the water turned tepid. I floated for what seemed like hours. I gazed upwards into the darkness knowing that all that was above me, was always there, just hidden by the presence of light. And I see light has its own ability to obscure and obfuscate.
I allow the thoughts of how much I have struggled with the blackness within me. How much I have attempted to eradicate the parts of me that feel hard, unwelcoming, broken, damaged, running from the light. I have spent my life time attempting to drink them away, work them away, pretend them away. But last night, underneath a cold November sky, I just allowed them to be. They have always been my greatest catalysts for change. They have caused me to fear myself, a living monument to self destruction. Every time I think I have me beat, I rise again to new heights, sailing over the ashes of my former self.
Today is my last day of 54. Tomorrow I will advance another year. And I am not sad. Each passing milestone evincing my tenacity, my willingness to bend, not break. I welcome the years, not so much they effect my body and mind, but honored to still be here despite my best efforts to the contrary.
And in this swell of darkness, coyotes screaming and running, I feel safe. I feel good. I feel whole. I am no longer spending my time attempting to be someone I am not. I trudge the road willingly and smartly. Trusting that each footfall forward will reveal new truths and insights and options and they shall arrive in the cover of night and the illumination of day.
I can see now I need the blackness just as much as I need the light. I relish my time in both. I love this life that is full of heartbreak and loss as much as I love the joyful, heart opening breaths of life and light. I see the balance and order of it all. I feel it whether I am bathed in shrouded crepuscule or the nirvana of brilliant luminosity. Life is here, unfolding in either realm. I exist in both. I need both. Requiring the light just as much as I do the blackness.
I have learned in this dimness, to love even those parts of me that hurt, that wound, that are so calloused over by the passage of years and remembering. I am all of what has happened to me. I am a product of all that came before. A fiery test of metal, bone and sinew...one that I am still winning...one that I still own. Each daybreak a reminder that life is unfolding, sometimes in a tub on the side of a mountain with a heavenly nighttime show, and sometimes in the bleakness of cold foggy mornings where the mist clouds and softens the definitions of things.
It is within this intimacy of darkness, within this Cimmerian shade I find myself, whole, complete, alone and living...just as much as I see myself when the shine of daybreak comes and illuminates all the darkness obscured. I need them both to live a life examined, revered.
Again...still.
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