I used to think that I suffered from ‘SAD’ (seasonal affective disorder), because I noticed that my depressive symptoms and anxiety would tend to increase in the autumn and winter months. Now? I’m not so sure… Is it the winter months themselves that cause me to feel ‘dread’, or is it the associated memories with the darkness, which those months bring an increase of, that cause such a feeling?…
Something that I have noticed is that, when it’s dark, and I’m outside in the dark, I experience what I can only describe as ‘a sense of dread.’ It’s not that I’m ‘scared’ of the dark, at least, not in the way that people would traditionally think one would be scared of the dark anyway. It’s more that the dark gives me a sense of…unease. Of, largely unexplainable, sadness. A deep rooted sense of ‘impending doom’ which transports me (mentally) back to 16/17 year old Lisa… Memories from when I was in the depths of Anorexia, fuelled by an obsessive desire (or rather, as it felt at the time, an obsessive ‘need’), to be the absolute best runner that I could be), being in the darkness resurfaces all of those memories…
‘Those‘ Memories
Despite being extremely underweight, despite being told that my body was shutting down
(with a dangerously low heart rate, my heart wasn’t coping with the constant strain that I was putting it under… And, with a diagnosis of osteopenia, my bone marrow was failing),
I still laced up my shoes every day, and I still went running, mile after mile, regardless. Because, again, I had an obsessive ‘need’ to do so…
Sometimes I would think to myself, especially when it was pouring it down with rain outside and freezing cold in the height of winter, how nice it would be to not go out running, to stay in the warmth of my house and… to just ‘rest.’ But, of course, I never did that. I never let myself just ‘rest.’ The obsession I felt to run was too strong, the guilt I felt when I didn’t run, too much for me to handle… A vicious cycle because, when I didn’t run, I didn’t eat (which made me lose weight) but, when I did run, I ran to excess, wouldn’t know when to stop, didn’t stop, couldn’t stop (which also made me lose weight)… In the end, it took the choice of ‘to run or not to run’, ‘to eat or not to eat’, being taken away from me for me to release the grip of Anorexia and for me to, finally, reclaim the grip on my life (something which I didn’t have when I was in the depths of Anorexia)…
So, Why A ‘Fear’ Of The Dark?
When I was running, I would head out first thing in the morning before breakfast, (when it was still dark) just to ‘get it out of the way.’ Not because running would ‘set me up for the day’, or give me an ‘endorphin rush’, but because I knew that if I didn’t go as soon as I woke up, then I would just be thinking about it all day, thinking about how much I didn’t want to do it, but knowing that I had to do it (not that I did ‘have’ to do it, obviously, but because I felt like I had to do it)…
In the morning before anyone in my house was up, I would put on my trainers and go. ‘Long run Sundays’ seeing me being gone for two plus hours pounding the pavements, running sub seven-minute-mile half marathons on an empty stomach.
Reflecting back on this, I question how I kept going, how I didn’t collapse. or worse… I genuinely do believe that if I hadn’t been forced to stop running when I was, if that choice hadn’t been taken away from me that day in July 2018 when I was sectioned and sent to hospital, then I wouldn’t be here today… Because, your heart is a muscle and, just like any other muscle in your body that is overworked and overworked, put under constant strain, it will rip, or tear, or just, stop working. Unlike every other muscle in your body though, if the heart does stop working then, that’s it. Your life is over. You’re dead and, no amount of one-to-ones with the best physio therapists in the world will change that…
And, the above is something that I knew, even then, even when Anorexia had me held firmly in its grip. The very real possibility that running could kill me was something which, every time I laced up my shoes and headed out of my back door, I always had, in the back of my mind. A fear that; ‘maybe today will be the day that I won’t make it home’ triggering in me an unrelenting sense of dread/a premonition that something bad was going to happen to me, that my body was finally ready to give in. I knew that this was a very real possibility, and that I was, essentially, ‘gambling’ with my life every time I ran but still, I went regardless. I kept going, ignoring that sense of dread. Why did I do it? I kept running mile after mile, eating less and less, my body getting weaker and weaker by the day because, ultimately, the pull, the ‘addiction’ to run was too strong, an overpowering force which, the thought of not doing induced in me more fear than the thought of dying…
The ‘Sense Of Dread’ Persists…
Now when I wake up in the mornings and it’s dark outside, when I’m in the kitchen lacing my boots up to take my dogs out for a walk, the sense of dread is there. Still. Not because I worry that I’m going to collapse and die anymore, but because the memories from that time, the associations with the dark- not just metaphorically as in, ‘those years were a very dark part of my life (although, they were), but also literally, they remain. PTSD of sorts? Potentially. I associate those years, all of the pain and the loss that they were characterised by, with the dark. I’m trying to remind myself though that, I’m not in that place anymore. That, although the memories might still be there, in that place, in the ‘dark’, I am not. At least, physically I am not. Mentally, the choice ‘to be or not to be’ (in the dark) is mine. I have the choice to see the darkness, to be in it, even, but to not let it consume me. I don’t have to let the darkness get inside of my head…
The title of my latest poetry collection, ‘Don’t Let The Darkness Get Inside’, is testament to this. A testament to the idea that, you can feel the darkness. You can feel all the feels and know what it means to feel hurt and scared and sad and all of those emotions that so many of us spend our whole lives so desperately trying to run away from, but, you don’t have to let those feelings consume you. Sit with them, observe them, let them go. Appreciate the lessons that sitting in the darkness has taught you, for;
”You’ve got to experience the bad to appreciate the good-
It is only when we acknowledge the pain of our past, that we can embrace the beauty of our future.’
(Insert several other cheesy quote variations here)…
but, in allowing your mind back there (temporarily), acknowledge that you are not in that place anymore. Acknowledge that you can revisit it, but that you don’t have to stay there. Give yourself permission to move on and to LIVE your life.
In the absence of dread and ‘what if’s’, ‘could’ve, would’ve, should’ve beens’, give yourself permission to feel what you need to feel but just…
~don’t let the darkness get inside~
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