Deep in darkness...deep in fear...the light long ago turned to only sound as I feel my way through the darkness of my heart and my life. Long ago my way was lit by sun and stars...the ground around me visible with shimmering life...the sound of my feet upon the path I walked was drowned out by the sounds of life and promise all around. Everything I touched glimmered with life and light. The places I went were full of life, not bustling around me, but enveloping me as a part of it all. Slowly the sounds became muffled and my own steps became more pronounced...the light that once lit the way of the path I often stumbled on, slowly dimmed and faded...so slowly as to not be noticed till it was far too late...Painfully I continued to find new turns and new routes to the path I walked...continually looking to again find light in my heart and sound in my life...but every turn led darker...till eventually the path was without any light at all...the bright star that once showed me a way to travel...the hope for all that could be in my timeline...was all but extinguished by the ever growing walls of the canyon my life had become...
Deeper into the canyon I traveled...all while trying to find a path out...no matter where I chose a change to my route...it only went deeper...the canyon turned to cavern...darkness turned blacker than I ever thought possible...the sounds of even my own steps became silent...till there was nothing....The nothing around me grew...the silence around me filled my ears with dread and remorse...the darkness became what I knew and understood...so I walked...continuing to fumble in the void of all senses...in the darkness that had become my heart...the core of who I am became nothing...a soulless empty void...without sight or smell...sound or taste...Daily I longed for the taste of fresh perspective...for the sound of dawns light in my life...for the sight of each noise that was the life around me...for the smell of nectar in my starving mouth....but it was not to be...only a cold heart...and void...all that was left of the man I vaguely remembered being...nothing of the man I once knew and knew I could be.
One day, while fumbling in my personal darkness, I was struck by a feeling. Struck is the perfect word for what had happened...as it knocked me quickly to the ground. The air pounded from my lungs, left me helpless on my back, motionless and gasping for breath. I laid feeling as though there was no reason to get up, no reason to move again for there was no progress in my motion. I no longer felt as though my struggled movement was taking me anywhere. As moving in the absolute darkness felt as though I were not moving at all with absolutely no points of reference left in my existence. I continued to lie and wonder if I should even bother to try any longer. The trying seemed to get me no further than giving up. The world had taken its full toll on me and ripped the last of my soul from me, leaving me unsure of why to even try. I laid in the darkness on my back…staring presumably up, at the nothing that surrounded me. Waiting simply for an end…for the darkness to finish consuming me like a boa consumes a rat. I was giving up on hope and progress for my existence.
As I lay motionless…feeling the coldness overtaking me…I was struck again like a punch…an unexpected hit to the gut by an unknown force. This time the hit was wholly different…it hit hard, but not foreboding…not in any way dreadful…but rather a hit of 'wake up'! As if something were trying to hit me hard enough to shake my soul to consciousness…to make me again self-aware. It was as if someone spoke to my very heart. Pain radiated from my gut to all of my extremities making them want to move. An unfamiliar voice boomed from my heart screaming 'nooooo… Do NOT give up your journey… Do not give up this fight. Take back the darkness…make it your own to find life's light'
I lay for a few more minutes thinking about what I thought I heard…wondering if I had heard it in my head…or if I had actually heard it. Thoughts in my head were scattered and broken as they had been for years. At the time…I did not know where the voice came from, where it originated, I only knew with everything, that I had heard it. I knew with what was left of my heart, that I needed to get up and try again to move, try again to find the light that once warmed my world and my life. I knew I needed to get up.
With a few minutes of struggle…the strength came to my legs and my arms…I rolled to my side and began trying to get up; laboring against gravity that seemed unreal and intense. Eventually I grappled my way to my unsteady feet and unsure legs. Though they trembled and threatened to buckle below me…I tried to move…taking a careful first step…thinking "this must be what an infant feels like when wobbling those first steps". I felt in the dark for walls or hand holds while I moved precariously slow and deliberate. After what seemed like hours I was finally again on steady legs, the shaking in them stopped and I no longer felt as though they were going to betray me. My pace began to pick up as my head was filled with the possible promise of finding my way again to the light. Mauling over the sounds and the voice I had heard when struck with the feeling to move. Still wondering if it was real or imagined, but not willing to ignore it. I tried again to begin moving…feeling the trembling in my soul…each foot raised one after the other…heavy like lead but still moving…dragging forward, one in front of the other. Each step a labor for beginning again to move my life to a place of hope and change.
There was no question that change was what I needed terribly to keep myself alive. I knew without change, my path was destined to end far sooner than it should. I tried to move faster through my darkness, feeling a glimmer of hope for the first time in longer than I could remember, but the more I moved, the more I was hurt, tearing my ravaged legs open on the jagged rocks around me. Continually I bashed my head and my shoulders on the obstacles higher in the dark cave that was my life. But the pains that once began slowing me on my journey into and through the darkness, now seemed to motivate me more. The more I bled and hurt, the more I tried to increase my speed in moving in the direction I thought was forward. Faster and faster my pace became, never really reaching more than a quick walk before I would stumble on some obstacle or another, but always recovering, shaking it off and once again continuing on my progress.
As I walked, pace increasing with each step, I slowly began noticing that each stumble I had, was recovered from more quickly. Each bash in my leg from another jagged obstacle, only served to make me want to move more swiftly. As if each setback now made me stronger rather than taking my will more. Not something that was happening quickly, but very slowly indeed. That confidence that once drove me as a man, began to reenter the void that was once my heart. Each step I took felt lighter and less labored, though still more difficult than I ever thought in recent memory, that I could continue from. Still though, there was no light to be seen in my path, still all around me was darkness. I walked at the fastest pace I could find and still maintain my footing, for as long as I could till the urge overcame me to stop. I knew I needed to rest and let the bleeding from my wounds decrease, so I felt around for a place to sit and rub the cramps, hoping to get a few moments to sit and recover. For the first time in a very long time, I knew my urge to stop was simply a rest, not an urge to stop and give up as had become the normal feeling of my life. It was a good feeling to know that I was again feeling hope in my life, and hope in my heart, a feeling that had become a very foreign feeling to me. As I sat rubbing the wounds on my legs and arms, my heart felt a warmth of life that I couldn't really remember having in my life…something had changed in me as that voice punched me and permeated my inner thoughts; a new feeling of possibility and of change. New feelings that fought the dread and despair I had now known for so long to be all that I was.
Still sitting in absolute darkness in my cave, rubbing my bruised and torn legs, a realization of something new in my chest overcame me. The realization that I again had a feeling there, an old familiar feeling, though one I had fully forgotten the meaning of; a warmth in the void where my heart had once been. A renewed need for emotion and power over my own existence was beginning to grow and flourish, though as yet, I still didn't know its true scope, nor where it had come from, only that something was changing. I sat, still waiting for the pain in my legs to subside for a moment, wanting to get up and stand again. The bleeding felt as though it were subsiding for the first time in longer than I could gage, for I had lost all sense of times passing long ago in my darkness. But it helped with my hopefulness and desire to have life again within my heart and soul.
While sitting and nursing my wounds and resting, I fell quickly to sleep in the most restful fashion I had in a very long time. Sitting on the cold, damp floor of my life's cave, leaning against the jaggedness of its walls, I slept. Dreams invaded my slumber and visions of hope and light permeated them. Visions I hadn't thought possible again began to come into my subconscious helping me to rest in a way that had been unknown to me for many years. Rarely had I slept deep enough to actually have dreams in the time since my life had descended into this darkness, but on that rare occasion, those dreams were as dark as the reality I was living and breathing. So as visions of sunlight and stars in the sky filled my dreams, the feelings which that light evoked felt more new than anything I could imagine. Not knowing how long I had slept, and really not caring, I came awake in an instant. There was no slow rendering of consciousness as had become the murky norm in my life.
For just a brief moment as I awoke and opened my eyes, I thought I saw light ahead of me in my darkness. My eyes burned at it's very brief shining, but it was enough to make me jump to my pained and tired feet and turn my body in its direction as if to use it as a new guide. Then, as quickly as it shined, it again became dark, but in its brief moments of existence, I could see my path, my direction, a short vision of possibility for my life. Though it burned my eyes after living in absolute darkness for so long, the feeling was a welcomed one. A feeling of pain, yet refreshing pain with meaning, rather than the constant useless pain I have wallowed in for so long now. I stood for a moment, gathering my thoughts, wondering, even if I followed this new path the light had shown me, if I could ever again find my way back to where my life once was, if I could ever again be the man I remembered being. While pondering, I began walking once again.
As I walked, at a quicker pace than any recent times remembered, I continued to think of the things that had happened in the last few days. Few obstacles seemed to reach out and tear open my weak legs as I walked in the dark, as though I could see and avoid them suddenly, yet all around me was still black. I noted that since being struck as I laid waiting for an end, that the darkness seemed somehow different, not as foreboding or all encompassing. I still couldn't fathom the force that changed my days, but I could feel it all around me, giving me strength and feeling where before I had none. Not in a sudden way, but gradually I felt it building within me and all around me as I walked. In some strange way, I could feel it all around me, pushing me to move even when I felt the overwhelming urge to sit and rest or stop completely.
Each day as I trudged through my darkness and again came to rest for a time, I felt a little stronger, a little more energized with each sleep. Each wake up suddenly came with more flashes of brightness seeming to guide me toward something, but each day I still wondered where they were leading me. Though none of those flashes lasted more than a few moments, they continued to give me a direction. Though each night, I lost gage of the direction I felt as though I traveled the day before, I had an overwhelming belief that each day I was led further down the same line. As if someone or something were speaking to my heart telling me my path had finally come to a proper state. It had ben a very long time since time had had any reference in my life, days and nights all ran together when you live in absolute darkness, but gradually, I began to feel a distinct separation of night and day, despite the lack of light to indicate, my heart began feeling the difference.
I no longer had any idea how long I had lived in this darkness, it had become all I knew. Fumbling through each day without sight, like a blind man navigating cliffs, but one day I woke to see the flash that gave me direction, only to realize that the flash had now become a dim light, turning my darkness to a dim shade of grey all around, my heart smiled and my soul held its breath as I sat and stared at the caves jagged walls all around me, waiting for it to dim and fade again to black. I sat very still fearing any movement would scare this little bit of light I had suddenly found away. As my world held its breath waiting, my body breathed fast, nearly hyper ventilating, not knowing what to think. When I had sat for as long as my heart would allow, I again stumbled to my feet, more ready than I had been recently to get moving forward. More ready to follow this newly, yet dimly lit path I could now see.
I scrambled into motion, moving faster than usual, feeling a refreshing feeling of life in my existence. Suddenly with just this small amount of light in my world of darkness, there was hope, reason and desire to continue. My heart sang as I nearly ran down the path I could see for the first time in what felt like years. My soul began to rejoice in its new found hope and as it did, I could feel warmth from the dim light that now surrounded me. Forks in my path became easier to navigate as the dim light showed more brightly in new directions as my pace quickened. Each day passed and the light dimmed again to dark and I slept, but progressively, each day I awoke, the light was brighter, the path easier to see. Yet the feeling of being the man I once was didn't seem to be returning to my heart. I feared a bit that he was lost forever and that even if I found my way back to the daily brightness of not living life in a cave, that I would never truly find what I once had in life and that I would never again be that man.
Days and weeks passed as I moved forward through life with a new light around me. As I went through my routine of wake up and run…follow the path and the light daily, I thought about each thing in my past that had brought me to such darkness, about each event and each person that had touched and effected my life throughout my days. I began to unconsciously classify each of those people, each of those events, each of those times and periods of my life; trying to find a rhyme or as pattern to what had gotten me to darkness, but none emerged, only more confusion and questions. But through this search, I was able to realize something as I walked and ran; that the only common denominator in all of the things I analyzed, was me. I saw that the man I was, the man I hoped to become again, the life I had, and the life I hoped to regain, were only pieces of the bigger picture of my life…
While thinking of what I wanted in my life, and who I missed being, I was suddenly overcome with a thought that had never been considered by me, or my soul, or by my heart…I realized that I will never again have what I had in my life in the past, that I will never again be the man I once knew I was, but more importantly, that those truths didn't matter. What did matter was that not being that man was only a part of the truth of my life; that not having my life be the same as it was before, was only a fraction of the knowledge…the true reality was that my life could be different, and still be filled with joy, and that I could be different, changed by events and life, maybe hardened in some ways, maybe even bitter in some respects, but that despite that, despite the difference in who I was, that I could still be a good man, with a great heart and a wonderful soul…just not the same good man…
As this realization crossed my mind and coursed through my heart like an electric charge, as it dove within me and found my soul and settled in like a warm sip of whiskey on a bitter cold day, I was stopped dead in my motion, paralyzed in my tracks mid stride. Suddenly the cave I was in, dimly lit and damp instantly changed…the dim light became sunshine…bright and warm and driving through me. Hurting my eyes and blinding me as I stood paralyzed and confused at what was happening, the walls and cliff falls of my life's cave quickly disintegrated, pixilating like a broken DVD movie, only to re-phase as a wholly new world around me…fields of green and flowers in every direction now suddenly surrounded me. My senses that had been dead for so long…now burst with emotions of their own. I could again taste the vitality of the world around me like a sweet honeysuckle in spring. The sounds of life filled my heart as though I had been deaf my whole life and was suddenly given this new sense. My senses mixed in a feeling of being able to taste the sights around me and see the sounds that permeated the air everywhere. Warm winds blew across my hurt and scarred body and shivers ran through me at the feeling.
I stood still for a very long time, waiting for my eyes to fully adjust, pinching myself trying to wake up; making sure what I was seeing wasn't a dream. I began turning to look in every direction. I could see nothing but beauty and warmth in every direction I looked. As I began to cry, the realization of what was happening slowly began to sink into my damaged heart and emotions. My cave, my darkness, the place I had been lost for so long was my very own. No one else could imagine it or feel it as it had become my own prison of emotionless misery. As life had turned and events tore from me the emotions that helped make me the man I was, my life darkened. The directions and the paths I chose, became jaded by my own needs and desire to hold on tightly to the things, and people and places I loved that were falling away from me in succession. Though my family and friends, women I dated and people I met, each showed me in their own ways that I could still live, that I could still thrive and be happy, none of those messages meant anything without what I had lost. None of their pleadings for me to climb from my deep canyon had any effect and I continued to descend into my canyon, then my cave, then into absolute darkness. Only my own realization of the truth of my life and the truth that changes did not have to be bitter, could save me from a darkness in my soul that I had created through the emotions of loss and bitterness. Through the closing off and loss of my emotions that made me who I was, I had turned off the world around me and those who loved me.
I stood in this beautiful new world around me thinking of all I had been through, remembering the long and terrible walk in this darkness that was my heart and felt remorse in the years I now knew I had thrown away in that darkness. I stood and wondered how long I had been in my cave, still not knowing or having any concept of the time passed. I thought of each person I now began remembering passing me in my cave and of their efforts to take my hand and help lead me to light. None of whom I even saw there, when I was walking and bleeding in the dark, but now, in my heart and soul, I could see them there. I knew without question that despite KNOWING that I was utterly alone, they were each there with me at one point or another, yet I was so blinded by the darkness and loss of my heart and emotion, that I passed each of them without even the knowledge that they were there. Each of them had blocked me from falling off cliffs in my darkness, prevented me from falling to my final demise, yet was unable to prevent me from still hurting myself. Each of them had, in their own way tried hard to give me hope and life, yet each of them were only to succeed in preventing my final fall till I could again find reality on my own.
As I turned in my new field, reveling in the new found warmth of the sun on my skin and the breeze in my long, torn and disheveled hair, looking at all the beauty that was suddenly surrounding me in every direction, I began to notice the colors of the flowers that spanned as far as I could see in every direction. As I looked upon their beauty, they began changing, flowers closest to me morphed and changed into the people in my life who were always closest to me. They were the ones who I now knew were right there always in my darkness, grabbing for my hands trying to lead me. As I looked beyond them I saw others, so many others, all who had been right there in my life, often without me even realizing who they were to me, brothers and friends. Beyond them was everyone I had encountered in my life, from people I had worked with to people I had sat across from in coffee shops, those who's names I knew and those I didn't. In my view I could now see that each of them had somehow touched and affected my life. I looked through the crowd now surrounding me, arms outstretched and waiting to tell me how glad they were that I had finally found my way back to and happiness, people as far as I could see. "Who among you did it? Who reached me and finally made me see in my darkness that there could again be light? Someone hit me, and hit me hard, whispering in my head to keep moving, to not give up! Who? Which of you reached my heart?" I asked aloud.
They all looked around, looking to one another to see who would or could come forward. I stared out to the eyes looking at me with love and hope all around till one stepped forward. I knew her heart immediately, and her face was In my mind, but I didn't know her as I thought I should. She walked to me as the crowds parted for her, approaching me and taking my hand. She leaned to me and kissed my cheek tenderly and whispered in my ear…"no one of us reached you, no one here gave you that strength, we all did, in our own ways, try to help you. But ultimately, the voice you heard was the only voice that can make a difference to any of us…that voice you heard, was your own…"
Gill Tee
2014