Tales of the dark

Getting used to telling everyone who reaches out, you are okay with a straight face, selling the lie can easily make you even believe it. For a while it will work, you’ll even think you are out of the woods but the minute you experience a low moment, it all comes tumbling down. Some mostly have panic attacks, suicidal thoughts, and a sense of hopelessness. But for me it was just constant silence and withdrawal from people. I believe so much in positive energy that I didn’t want anyone in my circle to experience that foul vibe.
The interesting part is I had a decent way of hiding it. Funny thing about human nature, they want to be around you regardless of the fall back they may be experiencing. They just wanted to be there for me but I couldn’t let them. Most of my friends took a step back after noticing they could not help. Well it didn’t bother me at all since I wanted my personal space, but there were those who reached out, never growing weary, dropping by the house, having Wednesday breakfasts (my favorite kind of date), going on adventures and just basically being there to help me find my happy place like clockwork.
The challenge was what I was going through mentally and emotionally. As much as I tried to detached myself from feeling, I never stopped thinking of the things I never got share with him, the things he said or did that made me feel deceived, the pain and the cloud of confusion he left behind for us to glare in. In all that, the feeling that disturbed me to the core was what I had missed out on for the past three years before his departure, was he happy, who helped him transition into the digital life and what made him happy. It was like I didn’t know my father, the man I buried on that fateful day. The feeling of failure and disappointment combined can really bring you to a dark place. As if that is not enough, you are burdened with the responsibility to look out for someone else in the same situation, experiencing a different kind of hurt. Where do you even begin? Don’t get me wrong, I helped the best I could, something I can never shy away from. In all this level of confusion, I lost myself: people take that statement lightly which they shouldn’t, because when you are lost you become a slave of the world, like the wind you have a master.
The slavery is what makes you comfortable with the darkness, leading you to do things you would never be proud of. As a society we need to recognize what mental illness can cause, what it can take from you and, to just stop treating it like a spiritual attack – it is treatable and should not be feared. No more protecting the enemy of sanity in the name of conserving tradition.
In my slavery, I happened to find myself in a training bootcamp that brought back the spark on my career trail and just like that I got to recover the passion I had lost to pursuit my dreams. I was slowly gaining back control in my life. The many mentors I met, the people I talked to and shared their story with me, the books I started drowning myself in all led up to this moment, as I write this. What stood out for me in this journey is meeting a couple of my closest friends who helped me understand the barrier I had put around myself for accepting the things that had happened to define me. They gave me moral support to seek help and even speak out when I thought my voice was nonexistent. Those ears have helped me to be able bring sanity in my life and I shall be forever indebted to them. They say, the brain-stem is an organ that can hardly differentiate between the past and the present and it’s what causes post-traumatic stress, so I chose to replace those memories, however bad, with beautiful and reassuring thoughts. I got through it and so can you, just trust the process of healing. I dedicate this article to the ‘family‘ i have gained and to those who never left.