Likin' the Spiritual, but NOT the Religious? discussion

What are some of your worst experiences of the dark? (Physical or metaphorical.)

My car wreck in 1991. I was driving home in February (Valentines Day to be exact) and there had been bad weather recently. It was evening. As I was rounding a curve, I hit a patch of black ice and lost control of my car.

That is perhaps one of the most traumatic experiences of the dark. Black ice is so horrible. So disorienting, even if you aren't injured in an accident like that. How did you manage to recover from it? Do you still have fear of dark and driving in it?

It took a long, long time to get to a place of freedom to look on that terrifying time without guilt, sadness and fear. Looking at the element of fear, I think it took less than a year to feel comfortable driving in hazardous conditions in the dark. But it didn't happen magically over night. The best thing for me to begin overcoming the fear was, as soon as I was medically cleared, my Dad, with much love and caring, making me get back behind the wheel. Not coddling me, just making me get back out there and do it. I had a good support team of family and friends, and I was open and honest in talking about my fears. I had ALOT of guilt to work through, because there were four other cars in the wreck and my younger sister was in my passenger seat. I came away with a bruised hip, but my sister had to be air lifted to St. Louis with a broken pelvis, punctured bladder, broken elbow and broken jaw.

Getting back into the darkness, acknowledging the fear and uncertainty, one step at a time, little milestones, knowing that I had people who there for me, not physically with me perhaps, but I could talk to in my low moments, and lots of breathing. I can't say that I am 100% fearless when driving at night. My natural tendency is to drive 5 to 7 mph under the speed limit since then. I have actually been driving along, look down at my speedometer and have to consciously force myself to get back up to the speed limit. If anything, I am more alert and aware of my environment.

Time is a good healer.........

Love and a shove from a parent...........a good start. :)

What a great story, Cheryl. That shove from your dad was a way of forcing you to deal with the darkness of that experience. (Both the literal fear of driving and all the other stuff that went with it.) You may always be more cautious than others while driving you ARE driving!

Rape, molestation, red moon, closet monsters, the phone call that told me my first husband was dead, hysterical blindness, etc. This is the slant to BBT's book that disturbs me (and I LOVE her works): she freely admits that nothing bad ever happened to her in the dark and her experiments are, in some ways and in many other places, terribly naive. VERY bad things DO happen in the dark and wicked people ARE more prone to act out their inner darkness when the sun is down. Most of her findings are extremely useful and instructive. I concur. But please, dear reader, take precautions to be safe and watched over if you choose to experiment with your phobic ideas about darkness.

That's a very helpful insight, Cat. Although she is engaging in this naive experiment with darkness, I think the experiment causes us to question a singular view of both light and dark. Neither is only bad or good. Denying the darkness in the classic sense of the word (fear and evil) causes us huge problems personally and culturally (as in the case of denying the existence of sexual abuse).

I hadn't thought about the perspective that Cat offers. Thank you for that. It is, as Nicole points out, to consider both.