The Dark Place 1-4

The Dark Place Part 1

Its a place that we all knew we would have to come to – if we ever were going to live again. I mean us tormented souls that is probably not bound to only us addicts but probably does include every single addict. We have to come to the dark place. It is not to be confused with the withdrawal of substance – it is the withdrawal of our delusion. It must come well after the withdrawal of substance. This place is our deepest fear and it is the reason that we cycle. It is the reason for our insanity. It is the reason for the suicides of our dreams, our loves, and our very lives. Many a noose has been wound, many a killing spree spree begun, and many an overdose accomplished for the sole purpose of avoiding the dark place. It is the yellow wallpaper. The cat in the wall. The ear that had to be cut off. It is that place that has been calling us since we knew we were different. We feared it even then, as kids. We wondered if it was because our fathers didn't love us, or if because we didn't have any money. We wondered a million different things, anything we could grasp really but deep down we knew. We knew that the dark place was calling us. We knew that some day we would have to come here. We would have to walk into that crypt alone and face not our demons or our faults. The dungeon will not hold our fathers nor our abusers. No, it is only us and the darkness. It is quiet. There is nothing else in the place that can take our attention away from the penetrating blackness. We may come right to the edge of the dark place many times and refuse to enter. We may even enter but run out before the blackness can fully embrace us. But there are two absolutes about the dark place. The first is that you are there alone. There is no hand to hold. There is no God. There is no job, no children, no spouse – nothing. It is only you. It is the most isolated place that you can ever experience and the dark place can only be experienced alone. Because it is your darkness that is not to be shared. It can't be shared because it is too jealous for you and you alone. The second absolute is that there is only one way out of the dark place. You have to feel it. You have to feel every fucking bit of blackness that your soul can endure. The blackness will beat you and rape you over and over again but you have to feel it. You have to feel it so thoroughly that you bleed black. You bleed until you are swooning and then you bleed more. You feel black pain slice its way through you again and again until you have no more sensory for pain and then you discover a whole other level of pain. There is no miracle. There is no deliverance. And as you feel the darkness, it is the only thing that matters and it is also the only thing keeping you alive. That blackness makes its way through your veins and nourishes you with hurt. You have no idea how long you must feel it because it has no time frame. You long for it to stop only for a second yet the only thing you fear is that it will stop – because it is the only thing keeping you alive. God help you if you enter the dark place and even more so if you do not.

The Dark Place Part 2

You are in the dark place. It is a small room, concrete and brick, cool and damp. There are no windows. There is no light. You are nude. It is just you and you always knew that it would come to this. This room has been calling you and you ran every direction you could to keep away from it. The running from it, the flight, you know will kill you. Yet death almost seems a refreshing thought in light of visiting this dark room. But you came anyway because you wanted to live and because you had nothing else left. Oh when you first curl into the fetal position on the floor, you scream at the ghosts that are long gone. The ones that used to save you. You scream for the drug and the drink. You release these primal cries for her and for God. You scrape your flesh against the floor dragging yourself to an exit that does not exist. You are in it and you are not escaping. In the beginning you scream so hard that you will pass out but the darkness is patient and the pain does not stop even when you are out. It is while you are passed out after one of the pleading sessions that you realize how very present the pain is. It is not the distant clawing and nagging that has eaten at you for years. It is a million years of black injury raining down on you. It is coursing through you like a train and you are absolutely sure that you cannot handle one more second of it. Yet the seconds continue to tick, each one like eternity. You lay on this cold floor, naked and alone and you begin to get your bearings. Not clarity, but just a realization of your surroundings. You see, you are in the dark place trapped before you really grasp it and then you are just there. But then with every beat of your heart your wounds ooze and the throbbing and pounding has a focus. It has a central beginning point and it is in your chest. There is something in there. You realize that the blackness that is surrounding you is not raining down on you as you have always perceived. No, it is coming out of you. There is some ulcerated root inside of your chest, deep beneath your sternum that is pulsating darkness. It is sending the black pain through your body and then wrapping itself around you with choking tentacles. You lay on that floor naked with slimy black tentacles snaking there way out of you and around you and through you and there is not a brick in the room that is not touched by its gore. It is pulsating and with every heart beat. Pain. Pain. Pain. Pain so intense that it is a whole other level of feeling that deserves a totally different word that cannot even be uttered. You lay on that floor and you have no energy and the only will you have is instinct. You need this source out of your chest. You must live, you must get out of the blackness. But the blackness is coming from within. You shake and you scream and you finally have enough resolve to begin to beat the ground. You pound the concrete wildly until you run your hand into something laying on the ground. You can not see what it is because of the darkness. You feel a handle and you feel cold metal. Chills run down your spine when you realize what you are gripping. You need the source out of your chest because you cannot handle anymore of the pain. So you violently begin to shake as you gasp with that knife in your hand, knowing what you have to do. It is just you, and the blackness, and the knife. The only way for the black pain to stop is to get it out of your chest. It is just you and the knife now.

The Dark Place 3

You are in the dark place, knife in hand. You always knew it would come to this. You want the pain to stop, you want to stop hurting the ones that love you. The ones that you really do love, even though you have shown them anything but love. You do not want to steal from them, lie to them, or cause one more tear to trickle cold down their faces. You want your dreams and your passions to come back into view. You want the blackness to leave and with it – the pain. The irony here is that the only way to get rid of the pain is to rid yourself of it in the most painful way possible. It is just you and the knife now. And the blackness of course, that is pulsating its ebony tentacles from deep beneath your sternum. “Deep calls unto deep”.

With shaking hands you clumsily hold the knife out from your chest. You know that it will take two hands end to end to have enough strength, which you are nearly out of, to penetrate through your sternum. You breathing becomes shallow. You blink rapidly with your eyes opening wide in between. You switch the position of your hands back and forth trying to find a comfortable grip which you cannot find. You consciously slow your breathing into deep shaking breaths. Then you weep. Not the weeping of one that you wouldn't know was weeping if they held their hands over their face, but the weeping of one that bursts forth with a high pitched cough. The weeping of one who knows they are completely isolated. You begin to speak to yourself in airy, desperate tones. “You can do this. I can this. I want it to stop. I need it to stop. Please fucking stop. Please. Please. Somebody help. Oh God, I can't do this. I have to do this. I want it to stop. Stop. Stop. Stop”

You calm down for a second and your inner self begins to remember. It remembers all of the pain that this black thing has caused. It sees your mother's disappointed eyes. Your inner self recalls her walking out of the door for the last time. You see every shaking head that has ever been faced with the monster that you have become. You remember the jobs, the relationships, the children, the money, even the God. And you become angry. You cannot help but to bar your teeth like a growling pit bull as each humiliating scene flashes itself across your minds eye. With each beat of your heart the flashes come and with them a bit more fury. Your heart rate increases and so do the flashes from the past. The fury turns into rage and with a scream from your bowels your anger takes control of your shaking hands and they lunge towards the source of all of that rage. The knife slams into your chest and your eyes shoot wide open, like you will never blink again. Your breath sucks in and you cannot exhale. You are locked in that position and for a split moment – there is no pain. Then it comes.

The pain is as if you have stabbed an abscessed tooth or cut off a limb. It is white hot and every part of your body comes alive with the white heat. You exhale with force and arch your back against the ground slamming yourself down again and again. You are in full blown convulsions. The pain is too much to feel and bear and you scream and scream and scream for help from people that are not there. They cannot be because it is your dark place. You wonder what in the hell you were thinking and just wish you have killed yourself and gotten it over with, anything but feel this. You welcome death aggressively and really expect to die at any moment. Any strength that you had left is now gone and you lay on that cold floor with only your chest rising up and down. You are waiting to die. You gather just enough power from some unknown source to lift your head to look down at the handle sticking out of your chest. You open your eyes and there it is. But everything stops as you realize it. You can see the knife sticking out of your chest. You see, every since you entered this hell it has been so black that you could not see anything but black with your eyes wide open. But as you squint and your eyes adjust you can barely see the form of the knife handle sticking out of your chest. You take a deep breath and carefully grab a hold of it and when you move it just a millimeter the white pain paralyzes you again. But as you begin to blink the picture has become a bit clearer, and a bit brighter. You realize that you are damaging whatever this blackness is beneath your sternum with each movement of the knife allowing a bit more light to break into your dark place. Once again you grab a hold of the knife – this time with both hands.

The Dark Place Part 4

With shaking hands grasping the knife you inhale deeply and force the knife to the right. The white heat explodes from within you and shoots itself through every fiber of your being. You arch your back and convulse banging yourself against the cool concrete again and again until the initial shock begins to dissipate. With rapid breaths your drained body barely has the energy to open your eyes. You look down the the knife is angled to the right sticking out of your chest you can can see the crimson blood smeared across your nude flesh. The room is brighter. This brightness does not lessen the overwhelming white heat but it give you resolve. You realize this is no coincidence. You want the blackness gone. You need it gone. You want to live and with barred teeth you deliberately wrap both hands around the knife handle again. You growl and force it left as far as it will go. Then the white heat, the arched back and the convulsions. The room is brighter again. You force the knife up. White heat, arched back, convulsions. Brighter. You force it down. The heat, the banging into the ground and then the brightness. The last thrust downwards came with a cracking sound and then it was like a million pounds of pressure were released from your chest. The white heat with this thrust and crack was even worst than the initial stab through your sternum. Your strength is truly completely gone but the flashes of memory keep you energized with anger and shame and you grab the knife again. You begin to apply pressure trying to pull the knife from your chest and you are surprised that though barely noticeable, it is coming out. The room is bright enough to have the gruesome scene in full view as you tremble and strain trying to pull it out. Just when you think that you are going to spend the rest of your days laying on that cold floor because you do not have the strength to dislodge it – the flashes of memory return. You see your wife leaving. You see your children crying. You see the disappointed eyes of your mother. You see your ill grandfather that you ignored at the end of his life. You see the money. You see God. You see her crying eyes. And the flashes give you the strength for one last primal scream and one last thrust of energy. With your bloody shaking hands you pull and the knife is coming out at a faster rate with every passing moment. Then, like a see saw when one person hops off with the other in the air, the knife is loose and the rapid motion of it loosing itself causes it to go flying from your hands and you hear it hit the ground with a thud, and not a clang. Your strength is gone to the point that you cannot even open your eyes but you feel soft warmth against your eyelids. You feel a hole in your chest but there is not pain, only sensitive tingles from a calm wind touching places that air has never breezed through. You exhale and drift off to sleep.

You blink your eyes as they struggle to dilate in the bright sunshine. You have no idea how long you have slept or if someone has moved you but there are no longer any walls around you and grass is under your back. The sky is blue and the sun is shining with no clouds to blocks its rays. You remember the dark room and press down upon your chest only to feel soft flesh instead of the gaping bloody hole you had anticipated. Your body aches a bit as you get up a bit off balance. You stretch and take a deep breath. It is the deepest breath you have ever taken, as if something had constricted your lungs for years from fully expanding. As you wonder if the whole knife experience was just a dream but as you survey the scene you see it. Several feet away, there in the grass, is a bloody knife with a gruesome blob of black stuck to the end that has tentacles that are barely moving. You know that it was inside of you. You know that it is still alive.

You begin to walk with no certain destination in mind, and nothing really in sight except grass and sunshine. But as you squint your eyes you see someone barely visible way out in the distance. You can not make out exactly who it is but you begin to walk towards them. You think of her. You walk and you pray that it is indeed her that you are walking towards. You pray that she is walking towards you as well, but the person is a long way off so it will be a while before you know. After several steps you look back at the knife and the tentacles are still writhing. You know that it will always lie there and will always be moving – alive. You pledge to never return. Because you cannot do it again. Then you turn back towards the person and begin to walk rapidly. Praying that it is her.