In Our Own Darkness

A very long time ago I decided people were worth being broken for. Now, disappointment is the thread that weaves together pages and pages of beautiful stories with uncomfortable endings because someone decided to change their mind.

Each time I lay weak and withered, I questioned this notion with intensity as well as the inexplicable reasoning behind it. What drove me to deem people worthy of a perseverance so rudely unaware of self-protection? Wide-eyed naiveté, I was sure of it. It’s exceptionally easy to settle upon values before life requires them; theory without practice is a dream.

Every shattering experience lowered me deeper into hope’s grave until I shifted in my seat, uncomfortable by the surrounding darkness that pursued me like I had attempted to pursue others. Would this sadness, this brokenness, these gut wrenching losses really picture perseverance better than I could? I thought to shift again but didn’t move, suddenly aware of how familiar these realities had become.

Sitting in my own darkness, I opened my eyes to look at what I was told should never be. The more I looked, the longer I stayed. Traditional thinking says this is where things end - I allowed darkness into my life and now it would rule me.

As it turns out, darkness is less interested in tyranny as it is in simply being heard.

Pain seems to be something we want to escape for probably obvious reasons, but I don’t think we're meant for an escape as much as we are for becoming. The more I’ve learned to accept the brokenness, the pain, the sadness, the absolute disappointment as a part of life, the less power it has over me. I’ve learned to sit in my own darkness long enough to hear what is has to say and I am better for it. For it was only because I stayed that I stumbled upon compassion - not the kind that is gracefully learned but one rooted in an unapologetic encounter of my own need.

As a whole, we are fickle creatures with inabilities beyond belief or measure. My darkness told me I’m just as incompetent as the rest of us and gave me permission to stay broken instead of pushing through to pull it together for others, which in turn, unearthed an irresistible understanding of those who couldn’t pull it together for me, especially in the areas where I previously thought they should.

I had to allow myself to be a disappointment before I could allow anyone else to. An intimidating endeavor for an alleged promise of what? The freedom to only be with people and let them be with me – no expectations attached.

Brené Brown writes, “You may not have signed up for a hero’s journey, but the second you fell down, got your butt kicked, suffered a disappointment, screwed up, or felt your heart break, it started."

Translation = you can either own your story or let it own you.

While disappointment may weave my pages together, a combination of perseverance and an admission of every experience has allowed a new theme to emerge: any pain I have suffered has not led me to bitterness, but through it, and into a deeper place of love for myself and others.

There is some intrinsic value we all share that makes each one of us worthy of perseverance. We are not disposable nor replaceable; too broken, too edgy, or too disappointing.

We are worthy.

Only now, after facing more disappointment than I would have ever wished for or imagined, do I see myself in the face of others. Only now do I see that indeed, “we’re all just walking each other home” (Rumi).