where darkness taught me to breathe

this is for those who went through the Dark Night of the Soul or something similar (a traumatic experience in any form). this may resonate.

It came like a storm I never saw forming,

a quiet tension until everything collapsed.

A connection so raw it didn’t cradle me

it clawed at the walls of who I was,

tearing down my comforts, my certainties,

and leaving me with nothing

but the truth I spent years hiding from.

I shattered.

Not in a beautiful way,

not like porcelain under moonlight,

but in a way that left jagged edges inside me.

Every step forward felt like walking on my own ruins,

glass grinding into the soles of my being,

each cut screaming of what I had to leave behind.

I bled.

For every piece of myself I let go of,

for every illusion I clung to that no longer served me.

There was no guiding hand,

only the weight of my breath in the dark,

only the silence that sat heavy,

as if it, too, was waiting for me to surrender.

And somehow, I did.

Not with grace, not with clarity,

but with the simple exhaustion of someone

who could no longer carry their pain as armor.

Through the darkness, I learned the taste of my own name.

Through the breaking, I felt the first pulse of peace,

fragile but steady, like a heartbeat after the fall.

It wasn’t them who saved me.

It was me.

Bleeding, trembling, alone

but moving forward.

Peace didn’t arrive as a revelation.

It grew, slowly, through my own hands,

tending to the garden of scars I never wanted

but now call my own.

And in the end,

I didn’t find the light.

I became it.