What the “Dark” Place Looks Like When You’re Healing
I’m in the dark place. I’ve been here for about a month, and it is steadily getting worse. The last time I was in the dark place like this was a year ago, almost to the date. It was during the presidential election, and I stopped sleeping for two weeks. When I say I stopped sleeping, I mean I didn’t sleep. Like, at all. I’d lay awake in bed and stare up at the ceiling. I heard noises when there weren’t noises and saw shapes and movement out of the corner of my eyes during the greater part of each day. I cried because I felt hopeless — over my own life and the fate of the country.
But after two weeks, some emergency phone calls with my therapist and psychiatric nurse, I went on the mend. My walks in the fall Florida sun became longer. I started sleeping again, even if I couldn’t stay asleep all night.
I moved slowly out of the dark place I know so well and back into the light.
The first time I hit the dark place, I was in the sixth grade. I spent three weeks in a funk where my brain refused to work. My biting humor went away, replaced with a sullen despair that hung over everyone who was around me. Most days, I dreamed about what it would be like to die. I didn’t want to take walks after school. I didn’t want to play basketball or write. At home, I curled under the sheets of my bed and watched Saturday…
