Sitting in the Dark

It is a very particular type of person who sits in the dark, who turns and runs towards that from which others shudder away in abject fear. It is the shared saga of the hero and the villain. When the dark becomes more comfortable than the light. To the uninitiated, one living in fear will act out of fear and drive out all light from their life such that each day is another level descended into Hell. Each step further from the light of love and all things wholesome. Clinging to the faintest whispers of love; the ecstasy of passion, control, and affirmation. Eventually the excess of searching for light to fill the black hole of their hearts consumes all who enter in and even the sun is pulled into this vortex of voracious vexation. Life itself is bemoaned and all that is revealed are the smoking ashes of a once great life self-imploded by the ghosts of fear in their head.

But is it in their heads? Do true horrors not occur? They do, my friend. They take hold in the hearts of those who have borne the weight of another’s fear. A seeded black hole in the heart of a dying star. Extinction is nigh and not only of themselves but of all that they love. The heart of all fear is their eventual extinction and the belief that they will have deserved it. The dark nothingness--unconsciousness, or perhaps everlasting torment for the pain they have caused those around them. Have they not suffered enough? Have they not had the pound of flesh removed for their sins; ever grasping, reaching, hyper-extending, but never quite taking hold of salvation? This is existential dread.

Their perceived worthlessness pervades their entire being. Poverty is their wage, criticism their native tongue, ill health their homeostasis, loss of love their waking reality, frailty their future and extinction their destiny. What is not to dread when those who walk in darkness take the stage? What will they not do to take from those who have to give to themselves? What help from God remains for them? Hopelessness. Helplessness. This is what remains.

To these devoted to their darkness the light is oppressive. They hide under rock and tree to evade those who walk in the broad light of day. They call those devoted to the darkness out into the sun to crucify the very things they will do anything to keep from losing. These day-walkers are the madmen, and they are the sane, doing everything they can to keep what they have stolen: hearts, lives, happiness, freedom itself. They array themselves for battle against an enemy they can hardly hope to overcome and die in their passions laid bare against the rocks and beaten by the waves of change.