The Darkness Ends with Light
Monday: Bringing the unresolved, unmet & disowned back to the light of my awareness
Maybe because it is Memorial Day in the United States the first things I thought of when I read today’s prompt were the starting words to the poem that is on the Statue of Liberty in the New Your Harbor.
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”- Emma Lazarus from “The New Colossus”.
The difference here is that today’s prompt talks about the parts of us that are trying to escape the darkness, trying to be heard, and trying to become a part of a new personal nation called Wholeness.
As we grow up we suffer traumas, we go through hurt, disappointments, failure, and other things like that. We also go through happiness, joy, successes, and other great things. We remember some of the good and some of the bad. What we often do with the bad that we can’t deal with is lock-in into deep dark dungeons. We often then throw away the key and tear up the map leading to them. I knew for instance that I didn’t like my father when I was growing up. I could remember a few incidents but I tried not to think about them. I can remember happy things about high school but I can remember lots of unhappy things also. Probably more negative things than positive. The vast majority of the negative things link to one overall umbrella issue. It was a poor self-image. My poor self-image was brought about through a combination of many factors. Family dynamics being a major part. The other major contributor just feeling I didn’t fit into any specific group. I was a part of many but because of that, I didn’t identify with any particular one. I left high school, went away to university, and then moved farther away to live and work. I didn’t have much contact with anyone from my high school once I left after graduation.
The point of all of this is that these issues all fell into one or more of today’s categories unresolved, unmet, or disowned. I had not dealt with them, they were not part of my awareness, and I did not have closure. Going through life as an adult various things were unknowingly projected onto other people, relationships, and situations. Some turned into triggers while others were packed away so well that they were not even thought about. The thing is all of these high school issues were kept in the dark. A number of these things were brought into the light and thus resolved naturally. For instance, I can remember going to one of my high school reunions. I don’t remember if it was my fifteenth or twentieth. What I do remember is that I learned I had little to nothing in common with anyone there. This includes people that I was once close to. All of the issues that stemmed from those high school years were brought into the light of my awareness and lost power over me. I haven’t been to one since and even though my fiftieth high school reunion scheduled for this summer was postponed until next year, I wouldn’t have attended anyway.
Other things fit the unresolved category. You may have resolved an overall trauma or issue as I had with my father having forgiven both of us for our responsibilities for causing it and seeing that some overall issues were likely caused by not knowing each other’s love language. Of course, there was no talk when I was growing up about what love languages even were. I do have things pop up like what happened in the marathon when I realized my dislike of anything yard or garden-related links to that relationship. I liken that type of thing to going to the seaside and having a great day playing in the waves, on the beach, and in the water then getting back to your room and realizing “I got sand there!” I wonder how I managed to do that. You know ultimately what caused it but you do not know the specifics of how it ended up manifesting there. It is brought to the light and washed away with a little water and self-care in the right place.
Once in a while, something comes out of nowhere. It might be in therapy, it might be when a friend brings up something similar, it might be from a vivid dream that you can’t forget, or it might be through meditation that an unmet memory breaks out of a locked dungeon. This type of thing is not uncommon in sexual abuse when people were a child. You might remember a relative that you never remember being comfortable around or a person your thought was very special but you could not put your finger on why that was. From nothing to all of a sudden remembering that was buried so deep that they might never come back into consciousness. So far I do not have any of those and I hope that I don’t have any at least from this lifetime. I have friends and know other writers that have been through that.
For me, at this point of my awareness growth, I know that things are going to come up. I know that darkness ends whenever light is released on it. I know that I will never be finished with this work. I know that even if I can’t make complete peace with a situation that being aware of it will help me avoid it hurting myself and other people in the future.
Peace be with you
