I've believed in getting out of the dark places, that there's a light in the dark, and that for better for worse, one is always strong enough to overcome. I still believe. I still not believe that my belief in that wasn't as stronger as I believed. Not until yesterday. Not until today.
Dark places exist. And I don't mean the corners without light downtown, or the bushes across the roads when the sun goes down. I mean places within; thoughts, feelings, and anything you can feel dark in. Darkness is always felt; never mistaken for light. If it's dark, it's dark. You can't call it something else.
Three months of despair, three months of self doubt, three months of internal anguish isn't an easy joke to survive. Just to wake up from a sleepless night, and to spend a day within walls that speak against you, walls in your own mind and harsh voices in your own soul. If only you could let someone know what you feel, and even when they know how you feel, they can't feel it for you feel it for you. They can talk to you, tell you it's okay not to feel okay, tell you everyone goes through shit of which they are right. But it's right when someone else is going through shit and it's never right when you are going through the shit. Anyway, you are there in the midst of the shit, no escape, no fucking escape. And the dark keeps darkening. And the light which you thought would come falls far from where you can reach. It's the darkness and you; you become the darkness itself.
I once read a quote by Rumi. I'm not good at exact quotation but a paraphrase can still do. If you are irritated with every rub, how will your mirror shine? I get it. The mirror shines with every rub. The more it is rubbed, the more it shines. So it means the more the darkness fucks you up, the more you grow; the more it'll fuck you up harder. Kind of makes sense. Kind of being true. Or I can take it as true. But isn't it despair sometimes just despair for the sake of despair? Nothing is gained from it. Isn't it sleepless nights just sleepless nights? Nothing more in them. Isn't it self doubt just self doubt for self doubt's sake? Isn't it. I really don't know to be honest. Sometimes I think suffering is just suffering. Nothing more. And sometimes I believe there's something in it; something hidden that we can never see.
Sometimes you are just chosen to suffer, to despair, to have sleepless nights. Sometimes it makes you stronger; it makes you weaker, it makes you more vulnerable. It makes you experience the ugliness of life. It makes you curse your existence. The worst; it makes you doubt everything you've ever had, in the way that it makes you feel inadequate to everything. Tragic enough.
You've never lived until you suffer. You've never lived until you have been chosen to suffer, untill the darkness has had you enough and it's satisfied that it has had enough for you. And then you rest for a while and wait for the break; it always comes at times. At times you just experience some low form despair, a darkness you can easily overcome. Unfortunately, it never comes all times; you live for the darkness, with the darkness.
Here I am. Three months have really been a hell to me. I'm not lamenting. I'm recounting an experience. I feel better again. I feel I can be among my friends, among the people I cherish, among my calm inner place. It feels good. It feels better. And am grateful for that. I don't know if the darkness will take hold of me again. I ask not. I've had enough. I've just had enough. And I want to laugh a little bit just like I laughed sometimes back before.
At least a little darkness can cheer you up, or can make you cheer up yourself. And that's the little break. That's the little break you can find. That's the time to laugh once again, to feel alive again, to live as it's possible for you.
Kabwere Musa
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