Making friends with the dark

…0r at least being accepting of the dark.

I live about as close to paradise as one can get. Yes, there are things I’d love to improve our situation with, but otherwise, we’re in a good place, surrounded by lovely people. Still, there are times when I look out at the bright sunshine and all I see is the dark within me.

Art by Chris Spring 

The dark is heavy and impenetrable. It actually pushes that bright sunshine aside. Smiles become work. laughter is forced up from a memory of the feeling. I walk with my head bowed. “What’s wrong?” asked a colleague. “Nothing,” say I. “Where’s the bubbly, smiley Corrianne I’ve come to know?” she asked. “I shot her,” was my reply. I smiled at her. “She’ll be back tomorrow.” I hope.

You see, it gets comfortable in the dark. I’ve always loved the dark. I think, for me, it’s a time when the excess of stimuli that comes with the day is quietened. I have to be careful, though, that the dark doesn’t overtake me.

This dark is different… definitely not comfortable. It’s a time when I stare at beauty and I hurt. It’s a time when click through my friends online and I’m tempted to just close my accounts and cop out of it all. It’s a time when I sit, looking inward and what I see makes me cry. My thoughts are uncomfortable with sharp edges jabbing my mind.

I go off to cook dinner, not because I want to, but because it’s a requirement of relative normality. I put on some fighting music, something to stir the beast in me. Some songs make me cry over the onions (I knew there was a reason I like cooking with onions!) and some had me belting out defiantly against the world and all that ailed me.

Yes, tomorrow I’ll let the ‘other me’ back. I might even let her play a while.

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