For those who fight the darkness every day, in battles we see some days but not all of them, and for those who keep the light burning for the rest of us.

When you stare into the darkness

Something stares back

When you call into the darkness

It’s true that something there knows your name.

Is it because the darkness knows the real you?

The you that you hope no one knows?

The you that fears things you can’t name or control?

That you that wonders how it all ends or what happens next,

That carries sadness  for the disappointments, the failures, the past mistakes,

That feels the deep longing to know and be known

That mourns the tragedy of those lost along the way?

 

There are days when the darkness seems to win

When the depth of its blackness threatens to block out the sun.

Days when getting up and moving on seem impossible

When the present death is all papercuts and piranha bites

That quick and absolute ending isn’t even where the battle lies.

No matter what you know or who you know, those days

Threaten to envelop and level you, hold you down

Starve away your breath.

 

Those days remind us we are not in this on our own,

Those days when those around us seem to be the only strings

Holding us together, holding us to each other, tracing us to the Other.

It’s on those days when calling out and calling up seem necessary

Even when all we feel back is the cold fingertips of what lurks in the darkness

What calls our name, whispering and dreadful, or sugary sweet in self-pity

Reminding us of what we can’t be, what we’ve failed to overcome,

Urging us to just surrender our lives into giving up,

That lying down our lives wouldn’t be that bad.

 

This darkness is heart-stopping, seemingly absolute

And yet in the darkness, there’s something, some point of light.

You can tell me that darkness is deepest before the dawn.

You can whisper platitudes about holding on, not giving up.

You can promise me that it will get better just because,

You can try and tell me that I’ll muscle through it, but those things fail to generate light.

In the end, I’ll have to believe in light I can’t see just because

The light has broken through before, the light can’t be beaten by darkness.

A little light…

A little light is all you need for it to not be so dark.

 

A little light.