Darkness is a home

I realized, while sitting and waiting for the storm to come today, that the reason I've stayed alive despite the awful symptoms of mental illness that I live with, is because I've had to fall in love with, and find comfort in, the darkness of those symptoms in order to hang on to a will to survive.

I had to explore this darkness and find a home within it, become obsessed with finding answers, and discover a strange safety in the familiarity of that darkness. It's led me to interesting and philosophical planes, and I remain in them for days sometimes, especially while dissociating. I have become intrigued by them.

I can go somewhere else, and while these places are not happy or bright, they are unsettlingly interesting and as an artist and writer, it gives me so much to contemplate and explore. If I can't bear living, I can at least disappear into these worlds and modes of thought, and I can find something worth living for, if nothing other than to explore something so fascinating that wouldn't be on the other side of the veil.

©2023 Shane Blackheart