It’s getting too bright

I’ve sat down to write this, and have nothing to actually say. My chest feels heavy, suffocated, with words about how I feel, and yet, nothing to say. I tell people I write all the time, well I write in my head, which I guess just means I think a lot. I think so much, I have so many words to say, but nothing can come out; I feel so much, I have so many feelings in my chest, my stomach, my mind, and yet I feel nothing at all. Is that something that can happen? Feeling so much that your heart just short circuits, fries, and turns off? I guess that’s how I feel when someone asks me what I’m feeling: tv static.

There’s a certain irony in how the human experience can be so paradoxical… In a second, your soul feels like it’s brimming over, about to burst, emotions surging in tidal waves so ghastly that they threaten to drown you. The next, emptiness, a hollow aching void that swallows everything whole. I guess it’s like standing in the sun, warmth on your skin, but suddenly the warmth turns to burns, and you can’t help but give in to the pull of the shadows.

“I had to return to the darkness, I couldn’t stand the sun” -Franz Kafka

I was scrolling through instagram and stumbled across one of those sad poetry accounts that had this quote over a painting of two seemingly star crossed lovers. It hit me. Sat with me. Ate at me. In one sentence, it made me realize the space I live in. I have a permanent residence in the fragile space of too much and not enough. Existence here is senseless, wonderful at times, but utterly confusing, numbing. I exist in this space where light promises clarity and joy, but blinds me when I open my eyes. It reveals everything I’ve worked so hard to hide. In the sun, I’m trapped. When everything is bright, there’s nowhere to go, no shadows for a safe retreat, no respite from the persisting exposure.

The darkness, offers a familiar comfort, safety. It’s more than the absence of light. More than the absence of feeling. I think it’s more of a space where we can hold everything at once, pain, longing, love, heartache, desire, anger, despair, without expectation. In the shadows, you can cry without your tears being seen, without someone wanting to wipe them away; you can scream without being heard, without being screamed back at; you can exist without the world demanding explanations. It’s a place of solitude, yes, loneliness, yes, but it’s also a place of survival.

I guess that’s why my brain turns to tv static and my heart calcifies when someone asks what I’m feeling or when I try to sit down to write after a full day of thinking. How can you explain to someone why the sun feels unbearable? Why fleeting moments of joy, while beautiful, leave behind an even deeper ache than if they had never happened at all? How do you explain that the brightness just amplifies the shadows? To feel everything and nothing, all at once, is to be caught in limbo, where every breath feels like both a gift and a curse.

Now, this isn’t all to say I hate my life. I love it, I do. Every day I’m grateful. It’s just, the light hurts sometimes. But I think there’s a quiet strength in the darkness. Returning to it isn’t about defeat; it’s about refuge. Too often, I think the world glorifies those who bask in the sun, those who float on clouds and make friends with the flowers. There’s a beauty in the shadows; there’s growth in quiet. Healing in the stillness.

All of this is to say that navigating the spectrum of emotions in myself defies words and logic. Mostly to make myself feel better about my strange overflow of emotions one moment and then dried up quarry of a soul the next… The return to darkness isn’t a failure, it’s a sanctuary. There is peace in emptiness. A beauty in the idea that some of my most meaningful and profound thoughts, are just mine. I’ve written novels and poems and letters and screenplays, just for me. And there’s a specialness to that.

Maybe one day, the sun won’t feel so blinding; maybe it’ll feel warm and gentle and inviting and beautiful. Hopefully, maybe. The darkness will always be there, the emptiness, rather. the shadows extend their arms in embrace. I remind myself often that it’s not running away, it’s remembering how to breathe.

How wonderful is it that I get to live in the fragile space where I can find peace in the quiet hum of my own existence?