The Shadows I Fear

For the last 15 years I have struggled with what I call "negative hallucinations" whenever I get too much stress in my life. They typically take the form of shadows saying some really dark and untrue things like:

"The world would be better off without you."

"You hurt everyone around you."

"You are evil ... and are going to hell."

"You are worthless..."

"Go ahead and kill yourself - no one will care..."

"Submit to the darkness already... you belong here!"

Those sound wonderful, don't they? They slowly invade any room I am in and start suffocating me with the cold darkness. It's why I have an anti-psychotic to make them all go bye-bye as I am terrified of them. I can't talk with them like my other hallucinations, nor can I make them go away using prayer and scripture as so many Christian's encourage me to do. I can't love myself out of them.

I might be yang with the rest of my troop of hallucinations, but the shadows are yin and they have always won - until stopped with the anti-psychotic.

That is... until February 22nd, 2025.

I've been under a little touch of additional stress since December 30th, 2024.

Then another tiny bit of stress got added January 26th.

Then another tiny bit of stress got added January 31st.

Then another itsy bit of stress got added February 7th.

Then... the 11th happened...

Then... Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday happened (19, 20, 21...)... and then there was Saturday... And my shadows showed up.

But, I cannot currently safely take the anti-psychotic. So, I made a choice. I let them in. I let the darkness surround me and suffocate me. I let them talk as my music vied for my attention... I welcomed the pain.

You see, I've been through the fire. Actually... that was just last year that this song spoke so strongly to me. Because I do not look like what I have been through...

My hair isn't grey, but I've been through enough in my 29 years of life that sometimes I seriously wonder why it isn't grey or why I haven't lost it all.

I just keep choosing love... because the darkness terrifies me. I can feel it's power. I've felt it since I was pre-pubescent. I was told to always feed the light, the love, the good girl... and here recently I have been stepping away from portions of that.

As I stepped further away from it, the darkness grew stronger and tried to convince me to end my life last fall a week after my 29th birthday - after a short period of me being on an anti-depressant that almost snuffed any emotion completely out of me. Thankfully, after a new medication and diagnosis... that got so much better - and I am currently seeking another opinion on a separate (yet connected) diagnosis to be able to better understand myself and learn more ways to help myself thrive.

The darkness stayed a ways away for a while. And despite the "tiny additions" of stress mentioned above, I have been thrilled with how my new medication has been helping. (BTW, none of those stressors were actually minor ones... 4 years ago? A single one of them would have left me afraid and unable to keep going by myself and take care of my children too. And as you can see, I have had several incidents...) Until... tonight...

But, then something new happened! I decided to let them in. ALL. OF. THEM.

The song that inspired this fairly terrible plan was:

"The world would be better off without you." Yep. It would be better off without who I am becoming because the world has been reminding me for a long time to sit down and shut up and play my role and remember my place... and after Friday and now today? Yeah, that ain't happening. The world was busy trying to shush me out of fear and now? Now... I have nothing left to fear besides the shadows, so yeah, you guy's are all right: the world WOULD be better off without who I am becoming!

"You hurt everyone around you." Yep. I do... I hurt people while I tried to protect them from the consequences of their choices because I was given consequences of choices that I didn't make for so long... "You agree?" Yep. I hurt them by protecting them from the cold hard truth that was deep inside of me. I bit my tongue and stayed the good girl instead of letting them feel the true pain that the truth elicits. I absorbed the pain. I took responsibility for things that did NOT belong to me while still taking responsibility for things that DID belong to me. I need to stop that.

"Ummm... ok... well, you are walking along with us, and you are going to hell!" I have a better idea. My life has been a hell that only a few have actually helped with without strings attached to it. The last year has shown who was actually there without strings attached to their love of what I provided for them. "uhhh... ok... you are still going to hell....?" hahahaha! How about this instead? I bring hell here for those who have been escaping it? I am good at wielding the light power: healing powers, loving powers, protecting powers, etc. How about I start wielding the dark forces too?

I believe it was about this time that my shadows started getting slightly squeaky like they couldn't quite handle me... "You are worthless..." Yep, I did everything by the book that was given to me - especially in the last month - after last year happened and I was told that I did it wrong. So, I followed the book this time. Guess what? It was still not enough to protect the biggest parts of my heart. So... what I am doing right now is worthless. It's time to up the ante.

"Go ahead and kill yourself - no one will care..." Nah, a few people would be WAY too happy with that plan. Better idea: I get louder. I take up more space. I give credit where credit is due! Instead of attempting to follow every word in the book that didn't help when I needed it too... I'll just use it to fan the flames of the hell I'll be bringing up here on land. I can burn in hell just fine while helping other's find the power of the transformative flames too...

"uuuuhhhhh.... submit.... to... the... darrrkkknnnessss.... as you belong with us......" Sure, come here so that I can hold you close... hahahahaha Wait! Stop with the fear! Come back here! I am not done with you! I have plans... I have goals... quit running away...

But, the shadows were gone. And there was peace. But, there was more than just peace. There was something new inside of me.

A realization that I cannot get rid of the darkness - that all I needed to do was accept it in the same way as I accepted my first non-human hallucinations, but also a harder concept similar to when I realized that I had to accept that I could feel anger without being wrong for being angry or that the concept of feeling proud of myself was just fine for me to do.

I have long wanted to be whole... to feel whole... but there are entire sides of me that I do not want to accept because they aren't what I want or believe in or know how they fit in with the rest of me. They are the pieces that I am terrified of because I don't want to be dark...

But, yin and yang go together.

I simply cannot be light, warm, and vulnerable without also being dark, cold, and indifferent. All parts of me are important for me to acknowledge and accept in order to step into my ultimate power of a fully balanced chi sans fear. *smile*

That balance? Is exactly where my full power lies and though I am nervous regarding unlocking it, I am very excited to see what kind of life that I can build for myself now that I am ready to embrace every piece of myself. *smile*