Hello Darkness

I know you’ve been lurking for days, in the periphery. I can never look at you directly. When I lift my gaze, you’ve already moved, already behind me again. I’ve been telling myself that I just need to keep my head straight. Positive thoughts, sunshine, maybe a piece of chocolate. When you fake a smile, your brain still releases endorphins, so it’s possible to mind-fuck yourself into thinking everything is fine. I’ve been telling myself for days to get to bed earlier, put the phone down. Nobody needs me to respond that urgently. I’ve been telling myself that if I ignore you long enough, you might go away, and then this morning happened. Ha! Who did I think I was fooling?

This morning, without warning, time folded, and I was back in Plettenberg Bay, exactly one year to the day. For a moment longer than I could tolerate, I relived the despair that had replaced every other feeling I had ever known, the sleep that went on for days and still left me with nothing. The cold bite in that house—I loathe winter— and through the curtains, the sun was already disappearing behind the mountain. My phone was ringing again because my ex was at Afrika Burn with his harem, and the agreement we had made together over months of careful, detailed planning around what this detox and withdrawal would look like and what I would need and how he would cover my son and give me time to just get through it, evaporated the moment the festival started, as though the conversation never happened.

His client needed an order and wasn’t prepared to wait for couriers. I said no clearly, more than once. But coercion. He knew what to threaten to get my cooperation: the roof, the food he was already rationing, my Beastie Boy’s school fees that he had already withheld for six months because I didn’t want to have sex. The life so meticulously constructed that both of us knew, I couldn’t leave. So I found my shoes in the last of the afternoon light and drove 120 kilometres through the dark to a stranger’s door, night blind, my Beastie white knuckling it in the passenger seat. On the way back, we took the long route to the furthest grocery store in town, sampling about two minutes from each track on Sleep Token’s Even in Arcadia (released on Spotify the day before), dramatically wailing and expressing our disappointment at each one.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

When the moment passed, I sighed with relief. We’re safe now. We’re far away from that place and that man.

And then I did something so stupid. So out of character. For the first time since COVID, I caught up with current affairs. I really looked at it, not just the drug policy circus. I stepped back for the bigger picture and then zoomed in on the war, the oil, the human trafficking, the woman who poisoned her children, the fuel price, the cost of electricity and fucking food! I felt my breath catch, my mind racing, the elephant placing its foot firmly in the middle of my chest before leaning in with all its weight. My fingers moved over my laptop keyboard and typed the words: “I think I’m having a panic attack”. Bless my bestie’s cotton socks. The moment her voice arrived in my earbuds, my shoulders dropped, I managed the exhale, and she listened, attuned and holding the space, holding my activation like a damn pro! The call didn’t even last that long.

But you remained calm throughout, just an observer. Patient, silent and consistent. You linger longer. You watch, and you wait for the last few weeks’ mania to run its course. What goes up will come down, and you have nothing but time.

We go way back. More than merely acquainted, there was a time when I chose you! I’d play music so loud, Otep, Igorrr, or sit with Amira Elfekey and Blessthefall until I was irrefutably numb; then Oceans Ate Alaska, and Asking Alexandria, smiling as the corvids circle overhead.

I used to contemplate death, from a very young age, constantly. What is it? When would it come for my loved ones or me? What then? The contemplation never made me uncomfortable. Endings, painful as they may be, are also beautiful. I think that’s why I find you so alluring, Darkness. You’re beautiful. Painful. Relentless. But beautiful nonetheless.

Lately, however, my inquiry leans toward life. It’s a bigger anomaly, a complete mystery. What a wild fucking concept. Why? Why this? Why now? What are we doing here? If this is the only shot we get, why do some get a hundred years and others a day, less even? What would the point be? Are we a speck on a dandelion, or are we in a damn gym locker?

Takes me back to that trip. Mushrooms, a chillum circle, a DMT bong from a friend who materialised at exactly the wrong moment, and within minutes I was in the back seat of a car watching the same ten seconds play out over and over. Across the Atlantic, the sun set, and hours disappeared into it. It showed me that the thing I had always believed made a beautiful and abstract spiritual philosophy is the literal and inescapable structure of everything! Energy cannot be destroyed, it loops. Around and around on the same track with no exit.

The cycle of birth, death and rebirth, Samsara in it’s perpetual glory! I lay in the dirt in the forest with my head in Tyrel’s lap, puffy eyes and wet cheeks and said, “Dude. I think I’m dying. I hope I am because I can’t cope. I can’t do this all again! Death isn’t relief. We’re stuck. It just starts over again. And again. And again.”

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Eleven months. I have been in recovery for eleven months. For six years, I have studied, and I have obtained a mountain of certificates. I have applied for one job after another, everywhere; second-hand car sales, retail, admin, all of it. One month and it'll be a year since I got out of that place, and I am no further along than the day I left.

And here you are, again. Still, you hover. You wait your turn. Soon. Both of us know it.

I am worried. I worry about my Beastie Boy. I worry about my mother. I worry about my bestie. And I worry about my amazing partner. I worry about myself. And I really, really worry about humans, everywhere. I look at the world, and I genuinely do not know how we got here or what we thought we were doing.

Hello, darkness.
I know you’re here.
I know.

♡ • ⛧ • ⚸

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Call for participants! Women/femmes with current or past meth use over prolonged periods in middle to high-income settings. Anonymous. No identifying questions. Takes about 15 minutes.

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