Drowning in the Dark

I was drowning in the dark. Yet unlike the darkness that you were afraid of as a little girl; this darkness was all consuming and self-inflicted. I was afraid to dance in the light so I hide in the shadows. I needed the dark. Needed the shadows clinging to the walls to consume me from the inside out so the darkness took me. Pulled me deeper than the surface level shadows along the wall and into a place where I couldn’t see my hand when I held it right in front of my face. It was drowning me; I panicked. I ran kicking and screaming trying to free myself but only running deeper instead. That’s the terrifying part of darkness. When it’s dark you have no idea which way is out. And I had trapped myself here.

I saw flashes of the light; sometimes by people as they passed through on the way to better things, sometimes by things that shone a light until they slowly died and became one with my all consuming reality.

I wanted out more than anything. I dreamed of my own personal moonbeam shining through the cracks and guiding me out to rejoin the rest of the world; yet, I was stuck here with the monsters and noises that kept me awake in the dead of what I assumed to be night. I was pushed around every once and awhile just to make sure that I was still capable of doing something other than sleeping and walking around blindly, not knowing how to gather my bearings.

I died in the dark. Maybe not in the most physical sense of death, but every part of who I was before died there. Everything but my name, I had given that up before they even asked me what it was; they were not, could not, get my last tie to sanity. They could not have all of me. Despite how they reached into my soul, how the darkness robbed me of every hiding spot and place where I could be truly alone, it wasn’t allowed to have all of me.

By this point you might be beginning to wonder if I got out, and if not, how are you reading this? Well my new friends, I’m simply here. Unnamed and powerless. I have given up on trying to get out, this is my self accepted home now. As for how you are reading this? You see, you are becoming one with the darkness too. I see you hiding in the shadows now, afraid to step out and dance in the light. But I urge you to embrace your fears and confront them before you lose sight of who you are in the first place and begin to find fears in what used to be your comforts. Because by the time you fear what used to be comfortable, it is too late for you to do much of anything.


“In the dark you have no idea which way is up.”

The inspiration for this piece came from a play that we went to go see during creative writing. The line above is one that I pulled from the play as it really stuck with me and summed up the tone of the play really well. It was directed by one of my best friends and was fantastically carried out by all parties. The play was called Nine and from it I was able to pull out some really cool themes with the light and dark as well as some of the feelings of entrapment.

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