I’ve had my friend’s post titled, “Darkworkers” open in my phone browser for a couple of days. I read it more than once. It resonated with me but I didn’t know quite how to respond.
I’ve felt the edges of the darkness of depression, waded in past my ankles, but thankfully never submerged in full.
I do however visit dark corners when I write.
Hatchling writes, “[Darkness] knows our sins and our secret thoughts, and she loves us all the more for our brokenness and fragility and recklessness and hunger.”
There are dozens of stories, some partly written, some just sketches, some fully realized, in my docs folders that draw on themes that most people won’t talk about after a half dozen shots of liquor never mind in the living room over a cup of tea. They aren’t out there (published) because they are, in many cases, just too dark. I write them only to purge thoughts from the strange places my mind wanders.
Hatchling also writes about the secrets that darkness holds and can share. It reminded me of sleepovers and late night discussions… the most amazing things are confessed and shared when the silence of night has descended around us and the glare of the sun is only reflected by its sister moon.
I accepted god in a dark room and I rejected him in another. I’ve had revelations, voiced regrets, and plotted both conspiracy and intervention in dark of night. I’ve giggled and mourned in the dark. I sometimes get up in the middle of the night to jot down the ideas that my muse decided to deliver as I hovered near sleep; I’ve used dreams and nightmares as sparks for poems and stories.
I can’t decide if this is the same thing Hatchling is writing about, but I would be quite content to be considered a darkworker, even if my work differs in its depth. I’m not necessarily at the point of walking others through but I certainly have no fear of lingering there.
I love to read dark things too, and many of the movies, books, and graphic novels I love have anti-heros at the core or are even told from the villain’s point of view. I have no idea why it took me so long to get around to reading Gaiman’s Sandman series.
So often, the darkest creatures are voiceless: the guides across the river Styx, Dickens’ Ghost of Christmas Future, Azkaban’s Dementors; I appreciate those who can give them a voice though stories and perhaps one day I will be able to rework some of my purged and unpublished tales so that those dark ideas can see the day’s light. Until then, they will stay where they are, safe in the dark.
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The flower pictured above is Helleborus, a flower with a variety of shades that are atypical of flowers including this almost-black colour. They grow well in this region and are an early flower (sometimes called Christmas Rose), albeit a little strange. No Gothic garden should be without one of the darker varieties.