Shattered Darkness

Here I am standing in a hallway staring at a door. It is shut tight. Locked. It has been that way for as long as I can remember. My whole life it has been haunting me. Taunting me. It has held my curiosity. It has held my shame. It has held me in chains.

I have just been handed a key to unseal the room. Trembling, I put the cold key into the aperture. But before I am even sure if I want to see what is hidden behind the door, it swings open. Wide. Exposing the inside. For the first time ever, I have been granted permission to see into the forbidden walls.

I feel a draft behind me. A rip of current pulling me inside to discover what I have been missing. Maybe this room will provide comfort. Answers to unsearchable things.

Pushed to the wall, I step across the threshold. There is no turning back. Once again, I am not in control of my own destination. Like a marionette satisfying the selfish desires of its master, I enter.

At first glance everything looks polished. Spotless. Innocent. Just a small table displays a simple wooden box. It teases me. As I reach for it, the room starts to spin around me. Out of control. Faster and faster until there in the corner appears another small door. A closet. It opens, a crack at a time, exposing more and more of the disaster hidden away. 

Inside there are boxes. So many boxes. They contain answers but each one a thousand more questions. Each one uncovering greater fear, anger, confusion, deception, sadness, selfishness, despair, hurt, heartache, anguish, betrayal, disappointment. 

In a desperate attempt to get to the bottom of them all, I start tearing into them. Ripping them apart. But there is no bottom. There were just more questions and the answers were not adding up. They did not satisfy my longing soul. How could they? They ripped open scars. They tore open my heart to the true depth of my existence. They challenged my identity.

I turn to go back but there was no way out now. I was in it. Stuck to the floorboards. Shackled. Trying to find a new reality amidst the shrapnel of impair laying around me. Scattered all over the floor. Should I crawl into the closet and shut the door? Like it is my tomb. A place to escape and avoid the ruins.

The room suddenly seems darker. I lie down. Curled like a ball. Tears flowing down threatening to drown out my existence if I cannot somehow manage to stop. Is there anything that will help put it all back together again? Anything at all?

Lying amongst all these pages full of strange but familiar images and words, and none of them can save me. Not one. All these words teaching me I was never enough. I did not need this door open to learn that. My entire existence was built on that narrative.

What a fool I have been to think this room was in anyway about me. To think the key was a gift and the open door was for me. I sit up assessing the damage. How can I escape these harsh realities?

A window. I see one across the room. Stained glass. A mosaic. Blacked-out. Painted shut. Perhaps to conceal the shame. The intentions. The denial. The regret.

Sometimes being in the dark is nice. It feels safe. It feels like protection. A place to hide. A place to pretend. A place to indulge our fables. A place for excuses. To stay put. To not move forward. To continue the illusion of perfection.

But light, it can hurt. It unveils secrets. It exposes things. Pain. Injustice. Insecurities. Motives. Guilt. It cuts through the excuses. It makes us face reality over our fairy tales. It reveals the lies that prevent us from moving ahead. But what if it is the only thing that can bring peace? Healing. Revelation. Truth. Life. 

I reach over and pick up the small wooden box holding the remaining misgivings. Cocking my arm, I launch it through my fears. Hurtling it through the darkness. Crushing it straight through the window. Shattering it. The light breaks through. It hurts my eyes. Exposing what I now see is a dirty floor. Tainted. Painfully scarred, but honest. Messy, but sincere. Tarnished, but genuine. Blemished, but beautiful.

Suddenly the room shakes and unshackles my chains. I can now navigate through the filth and recognize the beauty in the stains. I can see the true narrative. How the sacrifice of my blood gave a better life to the unprepared. The dismal. The desperate. 

Hearing a knock, I turn back towards the threshold. And there it appears. Set before me, the door. It is open. Unable to be shut. In the light I cannot deny that I am loved. I am enough. Having little power remaining, I leave the room surrendering everything. Counting it all as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing the light. The light I choose to follow. To imitate.

I can see the fragrant offering of my emptied self. Taking the form of a servant. Being poured out. For I have suffered the loss of all things but count them as rubbish. That I may gain my true identity. That I may be found. Called out of the darkness. Into the light.