Writing in the Dark

Each day I have an awakening. Lucky now, at first I found that to be a major pain in the ass. It was easier to get along with whatever crap was showing up in my life if I didn’t pay any attention to the lessons laying right there in my path. Did I say lucky? Maybe so, but the good fortune comes from realizing that this dynamic is available to all. I just now have the vision and the courage to go where my path now leads.

It is very hard to see the air you breathe, as it’s hard for fish to see recognize the water they swim in. I couldn’t see the path I walked for fear that it would lead me to…where? I was a control freak, still am, but the thing I was ‘controlling’ wasn’t taking me anywhere. I was controlling myself in an effort to contain the demons of my fear. I wanted to keep the monsters away, under my bed as it were. In that way isn’t there a little child in all of us that feels fear.

Like Esther, my six year old, who occasionally comes to me in the night and asks if I really took care of all the monsters that lived in our house before we moved in.

Aren’t you a control freak too? Don’t you want to protect that six year-old inside you, even if she is only figurative?

Was that unfair for me to ask? Is the fact that you’re reading this far enough to allow me to recognize you as a fellow traveler on this road to…where?

I’m in my ‘cave’, the room I sleep in and work in, with the overhead lights turned off and my desk lamps off, illuminated by the lamps on the other side of the room and the cool lights underneath the Mac keyboard I’m using. I’m writing in the dark about walking into the dark, into the unknown, heeding the call of something inside me.

My soul? Is that what’s calling me? Is it the elemental question (What do I want from life?) being turned around (What does life want from me?) and vexing me quietly to the point of my not being able to sleep? I know what I want, and I don’t know how else to get it but to, as my friend Melissa says, “Flow with the go…” Without the ego-tripping I was prone to do I know there are many gifts I have to offer. Sitting here quietly I can finally hear myself, hear my soul speaking softly to me.

Writing in the dark

Now I realize that there’s a little light in me, a little crack in the bullshit façade I show both the world and myself. Bottom line is that I am comfortable with the fear I feel. It’s been a constant companion that the macho personality I developed couldn’t quite hide. I was always afraid that people could see through me. And now I realize that I see right through me.

Today, after fighting it off for almost a week, I finally got sick; the cold and body shivers had me in bed all day. I hate being sick, can’t do a damn thing except be still and feel the suffering outwardly that my spirit had been feeling inwardly. It’s after seven in the evening now. I’ve had twelve hours of silent reflection and many trips to the tissue box to blow my nose. I can’t say I’m feeling any better but what the hell, I’m sitting here writing in the dark, waking up after all these years.