Why You Need Your Darkness

Of course the past comes to visit. How could it not?

Memories play in the morning like a broken VCR (remember those?). A haunted machine with a haunted tape, coming alive at its own will. I’ll be peacefully rinsing out my French press and then me, ten years ago, shows up. Saying something careless and watching someone’s face close in shame. Had I known it would have that effect? Probably. Was I inflicting pain so I could lessen my own? Most likely. Did it work? Not at all.

What other instances? So many. Too many to count. How many days lived in addiction? How many mistakes made? How many words spoken that couldn’t be taken back? How many chaotic, catastrophic, calamitous actions that when played through my head still get me to say, “Fuck, I hate myself.”

And how many times do I say back, “No, you don’t.”

Countless. Endless. Ceaseless.

As many times as it takes to forgive myself. As many breaths as it takes to bring me back to here. “You’re not there anymore.” Again and again. “It’s over now.” Again and again. 

In early sobriety, waking up in a panic as these memories surfaced, whether in dreams or between them, were the norm. Suppression only works if I keep suppressing. All my “favorite” substances were gone. In a way I was inviting the demons over. Not in the way I used to. Not to do their bidding. But the new way. To invite them to dinner and tell them the new rules - they were going to do mine. 

And what the fuck did that mean, we all wondered. Well, I said, you’re going to sit there and let me look at you. I’m not going to do what you say cuz I’m not scared of you anymore. You’re just gonna sit there, and kinda let me…(awkward silence - shifty eyes) hug you.

Everybody sat at the table in uncomfortable silence. Maybe one of the demons giggled in mild hysterics. The other ones glared at it to shut up, waiting for me to cave. I didn’t. 

And so, we’ve been at the table for the last five years. I didn’t always win. Some were easier to say no to than others. Some were easier to love, and assuage. Some knew my buttons so well they still caused me to act out. Those I found hardest to love. But that’s the work, isn’t it. To love all parts of myself, no matter how disgusted, repulsed and fucked up they cause me to feel. To keep coming back with kindness, until I see the truth underneath it all. The fear that just wants to be comforted. The crying child that doesn’t really want the thing she’s screaming for. She wants love - not the “next best thing” - which is what I’d given her all those years cuz I didn’t know how to give her the first. 

When I went to visit my client Gerry the other day, he spoke of his past with quiet reserve. The ex that caused him to spiral. To do things that were so out of character and ultimately led to his incarceration. The shame that came with it.

“My mom asked me, ‘Son, has she put a spell on you? Why can’t you leave her?’ But that wasn’t it. ‘I love her,’ I’d said. And I did. In a way I still do. She’ll always have a place in my heart. She was so kind, when she wasn’t high…she helped my dad when he got sick. She did a lot for my parents. I’ll never forget that.”

12 years sober now, he says, “We’ll never get back together. She still has an addiction problem that she refuses to deal with. And I can’t have that around me.”

Gerry is a Coast Salish artist that mostly works in wood carvings and paintings. When I went to his shop, he’d almost completed his newest project - a wood panel with two bears, one white and one black, a mirror image, looking at each other. 

“It’s called ‘Reflections’. The line here,” he said, pointing at where the wood made a step, “is the water.”

“To me, it’s kind of like the battle of good and evil, which I’ve always taken an interest to.”

I’d answered that to me, it looked like the world of the living and the world of the dead. Or yin and yang, two oppositional forces in life that, without which, would not be possible. 

“Good and evil are judgments,” I said, “neither really exist. It’s such a subjective experience. The good and evil that we’re taught is a means of control. If you do this, you’re good. If you do that, you’re bad. But who’s to say? Who’s to be the judge of that?”

We could say that addiction is bad, but what does addiction really represent? A need for comfort, for love. And are either of those things bad? We could say that love is good, and yet it can make us do crazy things, harmful things. So what is good? What is bad?

Something that I’ve learned in this exercise of sitting down with my darkness is the pain isn’t there to hurt me. The pain isn’t meant to last forever. It doesn’t need to be self-inflicted as a reminder in order to “stay good.” 

“Yin” means shade in Chinese. “Yang” means sun. Either too much or none of either and life could not exist. We need both. 

How does one accept their darkness? Maybe it’s acceptance that pain is the temporary cold that alerts us to wrap ourselves with the blanket of forgiveness, over and over again. Maybe it’s letting a memory play rather than shutting it out, and seeing that turning towards our darkness is not so we can expel it, but so we can learn to love ourselves there.

Would we know hope if we’d never felt hopeless? Does our willingness to help not come from having felt helpless before? The anxiety of self-betrayal; the peace of self-trust. The emptiness of self-abandonment; the home of returning to ourselves, and allowing ourselves to be held.

We are able to help others when we face the parts within us we used to reject. Only in self-acceptance can we accept others. We cannot stop judging others until we stop judging ourselves. 

The light that we want would not exist without the dark. And so the light needs the dark to be light. Every day we are challenged with the illusion of duality. “Good” vs “evil”. But it’s all the same sphere, looked at from different angles. It reflects what we project. If we are to elect for peace, it must start with the heart of things. The heart within ourselves. 

When I asked Gerry what he does now when the feelings of shame creep up, he paused for a while and then said, “Well in recovery, what they always taught us is that we have to forgive ourselves. So that’s what I do now. Just try to forgive myself.”

Maybe forgiveness is the slow growth of leaves towards the sun. How a tree changes shape over time to accommodate its cadence of when it needs shade and when it needs light. Maybe it’s the unseen work of growing roots in the cool depth of the earth, creating connection and life where there used to be none. 

What connects us more deeply than shared pain? To know the loneliness of another’s sorrow, because we’ve self-isolated in mourning too. To know the heaviness of another’s grief, because our hearts have been torn apart too. To know the agony of shame, because is there a feeling that cuts us up more? We need our darkness so we can choose to love ourselves there. And in doing so, show others that they can be loved not in spite of their darkness, but because of it.

To see some of Gerry’s art, check out:

https://www.instagram.com/gerrysheena/

https://douglasreynoldsgallery.com/collections/gerry-sheena

https://www.friends-united.ca/portfolio/gerry-sheena/