How to Get Through Your Darkest Days

In the last two decades, my health has deteriorated.

I had moved to Hollywood to become an actor, but after a few years in Tinsel Town things did not go as I had hoped. My paralyzed anxiety prevented me from getting tested, overconfidence led to overeating almost every night, and my inability to be translated into a group of good-weather friends.

As the decade drew to a close, I discovered a deadly addiction to my toxic lifestyle: opiates. A few small painkillers opened a part of my brain that I didn't know existed: my calm, self-assured, and numb version that seemed to be more in control than the dialogue I used to imagine.

At first the pills were like an unusual treat — I would take a few before the nerve-wracking test or the first day, in the same way some people may have a few drinks before leaving town. But my illicit relationship with opiates was short-lived: soon the pills were no longer scheduled for negative days or neurological tests, and were instead needed for any type of movement or encounter.

I knew I was going to cross the invisible line when I first felt sick without the “dose” of medication. The physical pain they had been exposed to had lasted a long time, but they were creating a growing need only with more use. I soon became ill without taking any pills, at which point I began to walk a long distance to get more.

I desperately wanted to quit but felt trapped in a bad journey: I woke up hating what I had done the day before, and with great embarrassment I made a firm commitment to quit - then in the afternoon would come, signs of withdrawal. With my stomach turning and my head spinning, I have lost the decision to stop and start looking for my next fix. With that correction would come a few hours of relief, followed by another cycle of self-loathing, a vow of resignation, and further failure.

It was a spin cycle that could have killed me if life hadn’t intervened in ways that at the time felt so painful; within two weeks my “normal” façade collapsed and, with it, many pillars of my life. Like a house of cards that collapsed, I lost my job, my car, my relationship, and I was evicted.

It sounded like a normal country song where the artist lost everything, apart from those songs that person is often loved and innocent — but in my case, I felt like a bad person.

As I watched my whole life unfold in my heart, I had no choice but to return home to find a place to live for the only person who had always supported me - my mother.

My mother raised me with such qualities as honesty, accountability, and kindness, even though I had not lived for some time. A single mother struggling to raise two children on her own took us off a food train to a nursing school, and she looked helpless as I entered the same addictive cycle that had taken my father's life.

He told me I could stay if I was stupid; I promised myself that I would try, even though I had stopped believing my promises long ago.

In the recovery program I received shortly afterwards, there was a saying that was repeated over and over on all walls: "it is always very dark before dawn." When taken literally, it makes you think about how the sky is at night before dawn, how heavy it is, how close it is and how much it eats. Before the light returns, it may sound as though the darkness never ends.

That's how my early days felt.

But as I got together for a few weeks and a few months, I began to feel a little more confident about myself. With self-control and treatment, thinking and a sober society, the seemingly hopeless despair all began to split open and open the light.

I moved into my apartment, went back to school to complete a long-term college degree, and got a job as a waitress. Then, after a year of sobriety, I received a call from my brother that would change everything.

"Melissa, you need to come home," she said, her voice full of tears. "Mother."

My stomach churned as I held the phone, I suddenly felt about five years old. I later found out that it was a heart attack.

I felt the darkness descend again.

-

In the days following her death, I felt that I was a helpless baby. I dragged myself through my teeth, dressed, and arranged for her funeral; it was as if my heart was still with him.

The same thought kept swirling around my head - how could I live my whole life without my mother?

I never thought of being with him when I graduated, got married, or became a parent. His disappearance from my future brought a worse fear than last year — but as I began to settle into my misery, I realized that I had a way through this time, if I was willing to take it.

The tools I crafted will be useful in the dark days ahead. I share them below as a donation to anyone who walks through a dark night of the soul: simple steps to remember when you don’t see the way forward.

Take things one day at a time.

Modestly, you learn that thinking for the rest of your life without another drink or drug can be so frightening that you just give up and get loaded. So instead of borrowing future worries, you learn to stay in church, day, and time.

I didn't know what it was like to be married without a mother - I just needed to eat breakfast. I didn't need to think about my graduation - I just needed to go through one more class. As I put my future together for one minute at a time, I found that I was able to manage the emptiness with the bite-sized pieces. I didn't have to understand everything — I just had to move on.

Let the feelings come and trust that they will go.