Resurfacing (inspired by David Whyte’s ‘Sweet Darkness’)

I don’t want to go there—to the dark. I’ve crossed a threshold—remember the whole-body woosh of energy as it left. But I know it. Notebooks full of rushed wild writing. Words I couldn’t say to anyone because, mostly, they weren’t my stories to tell.

I remember the dead, the hollow, the ‘what’s the point’? I remember the missing friends, no longer there to lean on, problems of their own. I remember the body changing, dulling, fattening. The voice closing off. The hair thinning.

I remember the distance between my husband and I. The distance between who I was and who I’d been. The mystery of who I’d become, if the darkness ever left me. I remember going through the motions. Saying the things. Mothering. Barely lover-ing. I wanted the dark to disappear. Instead, I languished for years.

The Change changed me.

In the end, it was both initiation and invitation.
It was a release of what was no longer needed.

A resurfacing.

A chance to become what had been lost to me.
A chance to mourn the ‘me’s I’d been and discarded.

I remember the dark, but I live there less now.

Six of Swords Card from The Sasuraibito Tarot (background artwork by Genevieve Brown)
‘Sweet Darkness’ by David Whyte