Darkness Makes Me Feel Psychotic

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

When I was younger, I was fascinated by “darkness” — video games, TV, all of it. As a teenager you just absorb everything, and somehow you feel a bit “dark” yourself. Your “lower instincts”. A game between light and shadow.

Back then, I always felt the dark inside me very strongly, but I kept pushing it away. At some point it burst out of me — mania and psychosis. Since then, I sense “the dark” more clearly.

It’s normal to fear the dark, because there’s no orientation. In the dark, my mind interprets. And it can imagine anything.

During bipolar phases I was often tormented by nightmares. At night, when I dream, the darkness “wraps around me”. Inner, hidden impulses come to the surface — the things I carry inside me during the day.

But darkness is also a challenge for space travel, in a way: “How do I stay stable in the dark?”

After the psychoses, I often avoid “the dark” — movies that are too dark, or darkness in general. I don’t like it anymore; it makes me insecure. Fear, lost instinct. I just can’t stand that feeling.

During the day I create “counter‑affects” against the darkness — music, usually calm, depending on my mood. Sometimes I let the darkness surround me even during the day. I feel the “psycho” in me — a highly focused instinct, as if I’m letting the wildness out. Of course, I don’t harm anyone. It’s just a way of channeling something inside me.

Darkness and daylight, yin and yang. Just my experience from psychosis. The mind can be very confusing. Maybe you have to accept your own patterns. Life gives you feedback.

Just my little anecdote about “darkness”. Like the universe — the final challenge. In the end, everyone has to decide how they deal with it.