Into the Darkness
It’s just before 9pm on the Winter Solstice, and I am comfortably relaxing in the cozy warmth of my home. This week has presented me with a series of unexpected challenges that manifested themselves in the most peculiar way. I was unexpectedly confronted with the ex-boyfriend edition of the Ghosts of Christmas Past. I don’t mean it literally, but rather in the echoes of my memories. A vivid string of old recollections kept popping up and dragging me back down those old, familiar roads I never wanted to walk down again. To my surprise, I then heard from my best friend that she had been experiencing the same haunting feelings. What is it about our “haunted” past that just won’t leave us in peace? Why now, of all times? What if these memories resurface in our minds to remind us of the mistakes we made, urging us not to repeat them again? Perhaps not in the same set of circumstances, but more so to ensure we pause and thoughtfully acknowledge where our current actions are leading us. Maybe we are unconsciously repeating patterns or finding ourselves at the very same crossroads we encountered during that tumultuous time in those relationships.
I can hardly stomach the thought of most of my exes, but armed with this newfound perception, I bravely gave myself permission to replay some of those moments. As I sifted through my memories, I discovered that in several of those relationships and their subsequent failures, I lost myself entirely in the other person: their wants, their needs, and their overwhelming expectations. In doing so, I sacrificed my own happiness and dreams to mold myself into something I fundamentally wasn’t. The nagging question loomed: Am I doing it again? Am I falling back into those old, well-worn patterns of shrinking myself to fit someone else's mold? The ghosts of my past have somehow found their way back into my present, and it left me reeling in a full-blown panic attack, compounded by the holiday blues, the ever-present mom guilt, the relentless stress from work, and more. I found it excruciatingly difficult to focus, to work, and even to take care of the basic task of feeding myself. I felt paralyzed by the suffocating grip of those familiar, old feelings creeping back in, and all I wanted to do was run—run away, be someone else entirely, and escape to somewhere far away.
But I can’t do any of that. I am a grown person with responsibilities and people that rely on me. So, it begs the question, what is in my present that is dragging my past and dropping it at my feet? This is a difficult question to answer but I feel that even acknowledging it is a great start. My challenge to you is to ask you to do the same. Acknowledge the mistakes, the failures. Not just registering them, but picking them apart and accepting every ugly little detail. People say “I don’t have regrets”, and that is admirable but without regret, how can we learn? Lean into the darkness and find the light switch. With the lights on you can see the fine details and get to work.
Ultimately, this is exactly how the Winter Solstice presents. The cold truth, the burgeoning darkness. Giving us to cover to play with our shadows, to sift through bones and burn off the year.
Wrap yourself in a cloak of pitch, light the match and lean into the torches of the gods of Winter.
