I wake up it should be morning but I can’t see the sun through the grey dark clouds that crowd my mind but I have hope because in order to know darkness, I would have to have known light
The contrast serves to help us see the full spectrum of light in the world
In knowing that, it serves a comfort that I’m sure I’ll see the sun soon or even the moon’s growling light in a dark night sky
I lay in my bed awake, the weight of the darkness turns my duvet into quicksand as I slowly sink deeper into the darkness. It’s buried me with its constant whispers and an it’s unheard cries
As I try escape it encapsulates me faster.
I stop and breathe in
before I grudgingly utter to it
“I know you want me to stay, I’m here with you. “
The darkness loosens it’s grip on me
I slowly start to move, I turn to my side to get out of bed before I’m pulled back in by the darkness
“empty words, is always the way with you, you’ve pushed me aside for too long, your actions will determine when I can let you go”
I cry, helplessly, feeling coerced into a dark slumber – a rotting tomb of my past, my fears and failures
I lay in a paralysis from the darkness’s strength.
I cry as I see my loved ones moving happily through life as I go unnoticed
They can’t hear my cries that are being silenced by the gravitas of the darkness
It muffles my screams and transmutes a fake smile.
The darkness is in control of my body, moving me through my life and attends to my responsibilities with a bleak expressionless face
I lay paralysed on the cold floor of a cell, chained by the weight of the darkness’s tomb.
I see everything I love from afar but I’m so disconnected, I feel nothing.
I close my eyes, hoping this nightmare might be over soon.
I jolt awake, I open my eyes and see these beautiful big green eyes piercing through the darkness, they gleam with light
She found me.
I stare back at my best friend
‘I hear you’ she says
I feel my leg start to shift
‘It’s okay to feel this way’
My arm feels awake, I slowly lean up
The glow from her eyes starts to expand and I see her whole face
‘I’m here for you’
The more she speaks, it breathes life back into me
She found me
I start to cry, cry and cry.
The cries turn into laughter and she laughs with me.
My tears drip into the darkness that has encapsulated me for so long
The ripple from my tear drops, rapidly tatter open the darkness around me
I slowly am being surrounded by light as my tears flood the room
The world around me is revealed
I’m sitting across my best friend
I’m sorry I just went somewhere in mind and I’ve been so gone for so long
She smiles back and says ‘it’s okay, I always knew where you were and I’ve been waiting till you were ready’
In that moment, I finally understood the darkness and what it longed for
Just like me, it wanted someone to sit with it and it’s pains without judgement, without shame and to be vulnerable.
It wanted me to acknowledge that it was here.
It was here.
Eleni Modinos 