Yin & Yang

Growing up, mad love was all I knew. Physical abuse. Verbal abuse. Manipulation. Domination. Control. I learned that love was heavy handed, not something to be enjoyed. There was no room for soft love, touchy feely love, smiles or kisses. And sex... Sex was something you endured to acquire love - even if that love hurt, caused pain, betrayed or turned into an elusive illusion. 

At 15, I fell into bad love and stayed entangled in his web, on and off, until freshman year in college. Bad love punched me, beat me, pushed me to the ground and cheated on me, boldly all while laughing in my face. But I resolved that bad love, mad love, a love that hurts was better than know love at all. This happens when you don’t know you’re worth. You’ll give away for free what you deem cheap. And so I stayed, worthless me, worth a booty call with no self-worth at all. 

When things got really bad, I’d hop in my Plymouth Horizon and drive almost 50 miles to RDU and stare at the airport lights. Grounding myself - dreaming, wishing, longing for the day when I could leave my life behind and reinvent another one. The lights seemed to promise a do over, a fresh start. 

But at the time, I had no idea darkness and light are one. That wherever I ran to, no matter how light the light, I’d take my darkness with me. All that negative energy. All those false beliefs. All of my doubts and fears. And when the Light sent Doug with his kind love, fun love, safe love, I didn’t know what to do with his goodness. So I tried to introduce him to my mad love, bad love. To reorient him to my normal. And, it almost worked a couple of times. But pure love is nothing if not persistent. 

It will anchor itself to Truth and burrow into the depths of you, purifying and cleansing like a rinsing agent. Pure love cannot be tainted. It is a force. It has a power all of its own. As bright white as pure light, translucent and sure, pure love just is.  

I didn’t know that by running to the light, I would be invited to face my darkness. I was told the two could not co-exist. That light casts out darkness. I was made to believe my darkness was bad, something I needed to cut off, purge, do away with. I thought if I ran to the light, every bad thing about my life, my history would disappear. But this is impossible because all natural light casts shadows. And there the light shines for us to see. To acknowledge. To sit with. To lament. To heal. To reconcile. 

Light and darkness is every human being’s yin and yang.