The darkness closed in; not rapidly. It took many years, beginning from the left as a foggy, pearlescent gray with occasional less hazy, humid patches, ultimately graduating to angry, rumbling thunderheads punctuated by cracks of lightning and the warning clangs and whistles that accompany severe weather. Once the stormy elements ruled the western hemisphere, the fog and precipitation began, in like manner, moving in from the east. That line of demarcation between the blackened west and the pearlescent east soon curled (like two big fluffy cat tails) from the west, around the northern and southern poles to meet again in the east, creating an inescapable patch of semi-sanity from where all horizons presented the same ominous, billowing gloom closing in not only from all directions, but each distant thunderhead also reaching its black tentacles overhead in search of its fellow miscreants.
A look at the ground revealed cracks and fissures running haphazard as far as one could see. On stumbling legs I slowly navigated the trembling, tilting nightmare that threatened to flippantly toss me aside perhaps into a widening chasm that would swallow me whole; or worse yet, chew me up and spit me back to the surface to begin again. A vertiginous merry-go-roller-coaster endlessly cycling round and round and up and down and side to side.
It is hard to ignore these conspirators intent on mutiny - the surrounding dissonant onslaught from above and beyond, and the circling, quaking asymmetry from below; it leaves me fearful and uncertain.
A look at my thoughts revealed room for expansion; an opportunity to learn and grow; a chance to lighten the darkness and steady the steps. I immersed myself in poetry, and literature, and history, and philosophy, and music, and spirituality. I learned to doubt and to ask lots of questions. I found answers that led to more questions that led to more doubt that led to more searching. I found complexity that simplified, and I intuited an unreachable depth that goes on forever. I embraced Dark to better know Light. I discovered the value of work, and I rediscovered the value of Goodness. And once or twice I found an inner peace that validated the pain and adversity.
Today, a look into my center reveals active hope tempered by harsh reality. I must acknowledge the current clouds, fog, precipitation, tremors, unsteadiness, and ever-closer thunderheads. I must increase my efforts. I must continue to learn and grow. Thus far I have lightened the darkness and I have steadied the steps; and I feel fear transitioning to respect. But this journey, (I believe), will only grow more arduous. Uncertainty will continue to predominate... which (in theory) will push me to continue my search...