I’ve been teetering on the edge of reason, weary, dizzy, exhausted for what seems like days. Escaping to the lake on my own was both a brilliant and impulsive move and possibly in need of revision.

Someone once said that none of us are actually afraid of the dark, we’re scared of what it conceals from us. We’re afraid of having something with the potential to hurt us standing right before our eyes and not registering it as a threat, people can also be like that.

You be the judge.

It’s the middle of the night when sleep is as elusive as a thief, I draw a haggard breath, and feel myself slipping into the murky abyss, dropping into the unknown as if a discarded cigarette that someone extinguished with his foot. I feel jettisoned, abandoned, and frightfully alone.

Who knows the exact depth of our aloneness?

These are the things I think about when I’m swaying on the edge of consciousness, cloaked in fear, losing my perilous grip on reality. Deep into that darkness peering, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream writes Edgar Allan Poe.

At some point I encounter myself in the midst of a dream so realistic I don’t question the viability of characters who play their parts with revelatory perfection. A genesis of raw truth, veiled in illusion, and although I remain neutral, I notice there is nothing too unhallowed for this stage.

What could possibly be the purpose of dreams?

A sorting, discarding, and storing of important memories is the current belief but I also think we process emotion, express desires, maybe even rehearse the future while dreaming? Who knows? Freud wrote that dreams are “disguised fulfillments of repressed wishes,” but he’s a little passive aggressive don’t you think?

An unidentifiable noise, or slight breeze awakens me, I search the darkness for the threat, noticing the solidity of this world as compared to the fluidity of dreams. I want to dissolve into the calm because the softness of sleep seems so much more appealing than the treacherous reality of the dark where my thoughts take on a life of their own. I’m not sure who said the depth of darkness to which you can descend is in exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach.  

I banter with my worthiness during these long sleepless nights, remembering the question posed to Ruth Bader Ginsburg at her Harvard Law dinner, “tell me why you are here and why you deserve to take this space you have been given?”

How does one answer such a question?

It did occur to me if I can’t answer this question for myself, who can? Perhaps this is the most important work we’ll be asked to do?

Wasn’t it Descartes who said, “I think therefore I am?” Which doesn’t speak to our value just our existence, seems a little random, but how does one honestly justify their presence in this world?

Maybe I’m just a small piece of the puzzle, the prolongation of life, knitted together with colorful strains of DNA because that is what was needed, at this time, and in this space? A Swede with a penchant for wit, wine, and words in equal measure, someone trying to figure out where she fits in, maybe that’s why I’m so tall, so my head can be in the clouds.

I imagine this jagged line of succession that trails back to a more primitive version of myself, dwelling in caves, covered in the coarseness of an antediluvian time, carrying around a curiosity for life instead of an iPhone?

Or is there something else that warrants my being? Is this our one opportunity to give ourselves over to our own evolution, becoming fully human, made in the likeness of God? Or are we damned by a corroded mold, crafted from the sins of society? Maybe we’re a mixture of both, a heavy pour of humanity stirred by the divine, and it’s quite possible we’ve been over served.

I waiver, moving in and out, as if a tide of uncertainty.

Or am I just obeying a didactic command to be fruitful and multiply? To have created children of my own flesh and blood, I understand the sacramental nature of life, because I feel sustained when they are near me.

It the same with God “when she brushes up against me,” notes Allison Marie Conway.

Conway beautifully pens these words, “it’s not easy to sink into yourself and believe that you are worthy of the breath that animates your entire life, the temporary heart which beats like wings against the fragile air. There is a jaggedness to this kind of deliberate stillness, this disciplined silence, the feeling that at any moment you will fall backwards into the truth and the full power of who you are.”

Why are we so determined to evidence our own beliefs? These illusions we create and spend a lifetime substantiating as if that will make them true? We cling to our fallacies as if a child to a tattered teddy bear, maybe what we fear most is freedom, letting go of the anchors that serve our narcissistic needs, and not that of our true potential.

Something tells me that simply participating in the miraculous unfolding of life is our sacred work, to be forces of good in the presence of suffering, or simply releasing others from the tethers of destructive narratives we ourselves have created? As Carl Jung claimed knowing our own darkness is the best method of dealing with the darkness of others.

So I lie awake embedded in the softness of the sheets, twisting and turning with my thoughts, wrestling with my pride, my worthiness, my purpose.

I wake to a darkness in which I find myself fearing what pursues and confronts me, I’m broken down and tired. It is in the wee hours of the morning that I realize I might be alone, but I have not not been abandoned by love, she caresses my brow, brushes up against me in the dark, nestles me in the crux of her arm as if a beloved mother, so I know I am not alone.

And I’ll rise up
I’ll rise like the day
I’ll rise up
I’ll rise unafraid
I’ll rise up
And I’ll do it a thousand times again

Andra Day

I’m Living in the Gap, no longer afraid of the dark, because you cannot maintain the illusion of loneliness if you are not alone.

Anecdotes:

• I have been blogging for five years, only a few weird remarks have landed in my comments, but yesterday that all changed, and I have to say it was rather shocking.
• I had my first troll.
• Who is it that feels entitled as to judge another but not turn this arbitration on herself?
• I wavered between taking her seriously or considering her a delusional human being?
• I ended up claiming her as spam.
• Maybe she was afraid of my words?
• Yoda says fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.