Light in the Dark

How do we come back from complete darkness? Someone’s got to switch a light on. Sometimes however, no one else can do that for you. Now you have to be your own light in the darkness; the spark that ignites the fire within you to just keep crawling forwards until one day you’re not crawling anymore, you’re running full speed into the unknown. When you’ve hit your lowest point, there’s nowhere else to go but up and it’s when you allow yourself to recognise that that you begin to rebuild.

Last year, I had the beginning of my fresh start - the freeing moment when I was able to escape a tragic life I was dragged into but it wasn’t until now that I started allowing myself the time to rebuild and reconnect with myself. It’s not easy and it doesn’t feel good most of the time but I know that it’s what I need to do to move forward. I had to let myself feel the hurt, anger and resentment from that time in my life to be able to leave it in the dust and move forward.

I looked around me one day and I realised that there was no one there, just me. This wasn’t the first time either but it was the last time that I stayed stagnant, waiting for someone to come along and help me. I became my own companion, I’m learning to be there for me and that’s something that I always needed but always ignored until now. My new beginning is learning to say yes to the opportunities that come my way and no to anyone or anything that wants to do me harm. I’m making the choice to be a person that I admire and not one that I pity.

I will give you the quick version. I was leaving an abusive relationship. I called for help, I called everyone I could and had no response. Realising I was completely alone in this hole of fear, depression and misery, I made the choice there and then that something had to change, something had to give or I may not make it into the next year. I became my own advocate at this point, I searched day and night for a place to escape to and I had to do this without his knowledge. I’ve never been a good liar but I knew lying was my only chance at an escape.

Next thing I know, the pandemic is looming over us and restrictions are in place meaning that there was nowhere I could go to hide. Just him and I stuck in a house, he was getting more dangerous by the day and even the police wouldn’t help me. I took a risk and I went to view a house thinking that my only choices were either to perish at the hands of him or by catching the virus trying to escape. I decided to take my chances with the viewing and it paid off. Now the hard part, I had to somehow move everything I owned and my two puppies out of the house without him knowing about it or knowing where we were going.

Thankfully, my father helped me with this whilst the person I was escaping from was working - just two people moving out an entire household within 4 hours. But as soon as I posted his keys through the front door and walked towards the car for the final time, I felt as though the weight of worlds had been lifted from my shoulders. I felt hope for the first time in the longest time and I vowed to myself to never let it happen again. I promised that I’d look at the beauty of this world with love in my heart instead of dismay. I told myself it was time to start to look after myself and appreciate life for the first time in years.

Those promises went well at first when I still had the rush of change on my mind, soon after that, the intrusive thoughts came flooding back. The reality of my trauma hit me and crushed me under its weight. I could feel myself suffocating in my own thoughts and feelings but I just let it happen. I figured that if I let it run its course and just feel everything my mind was begging me to feel that one day it would just lift and I’d be okay again. Whilst some days this was true, it was an unsustainable way of living which would eventually break me which is when I decided to give myself a way of dealing with it.

I still allow myself to feel when I need to, though now, I am able to do so with the knowledge that it will pass and that the world isn’t as ugly as I think it is in that moment. I take time to walk somewhere beautiful or do something creative that allows me to see the beauty I forget about sometimes. My new beginning, my fresh start isn’t a drastic change - it is, for the first time in my life, a manageable change. Something that I am actually capable of as a human being. My fresh start is learning more about me and letting myself be.

You can’t help what happens to you in this life but what you can help is what you do to yourself and how you think of yourself. You don’t have to hurt yourself for the harm others have caused you and you don’t have to hate yourself for things that can’t be changed.

So, what’s my New Year's resolution? Be kinder to myself. My body has carried me through some of the most unbelievable circumstances, my mind has worked its way out of some of the most difficult situations and has had to process some of the hardest things and yet here I am insulting my body and mind? Being nasty to myself does no good to me nor anyone else and that’s what I need to change. I don’t need a fad diet or to quit this or that, I just need to be nicer to myself. I need to appreciate everything that my body has got me through over the years and I need to see myself as something beautiful, the way I see every unique face, every leaf, every river.

I was my light in the dark, I was there when I needed someone and yet I never thank me.