HEARTLINE PUBLICATIONS X PARI SHARMA

The Honest Darkness Beyond The Light

We must stop fearing the dark and start questioning the interrogation of the light.

Photo by Malicki M Beser on Unsplash

For bright white light, glowing, sparkling light, I object that it isn’t cosy.

Light is nice until you’re far from it; it shows you the world, gives your eyes a visible journey, and shows you how beautiful the ocean-like eyes of that one person are, how pretty a smile looks with sunbeams highlighting the corner of those lips.

Lights are cheeky; they indulge your heart in a way that leads you to submit all its chambers to the tenant, who is perhaps blinding your eyes, or maybe for any of its permanent residents.

Light is promising; it promises you vision and exposes all the love you store deep inside those chambers. Because it can’t keep secrets, light is deceptive; it exposes beyond your heart’s courage, it betrays. It reveals all your scars. It strips you down, exposing your tears and your fear, stripping you until your vulnerability is left shivering all alone.

Light doesn’t open its arms and call you in for a hug; it isn’t reliable. Lightness may sparkle your life, but when those sparkles become so sharp they stab your vision and then don’t let your eyes pulsate freely without judgment.

Lights are pretty until you stand far, but at close range, light’s a thief; it snatches the same vision it promised the moment you dare to come close. It blinds you. Darkness, however, does not deceive.

It does not betray; it does not blind you even if you sit in its lap. Instead, it envelops you in a cosy hug, where it’s just you and your heart, safe from tenants and the weight of being watched. It also sparkles your eyes, not amidst the already sparkling crowd. It doesn’t sharpen the sparkles to stab your vision; rather, it lets your eyes glimmer like ancient stars in the midnight sky.

Darkness remains and will always, whilst the world keeps changing its colours. Even when I could no longer see the world in the colours that a teen would, darkness shrouds them all…all the fading colours of the world and all the hidden shades of you. It lets you be vulnerable whenever you want and shares your void.

Consider the seed; it requires the dark earth to germinate. Without the void, there is no life.

Light dictates what we see, but darkness allows us to imagine what could be. It is the realm of introspection and the honest darkness where we don’t have to perform for others. You can only be truly free when you cannot be seen.

In the light, we are under a relentless spotlight. We are forced to fix our hair, curate our expressions, and meticulously hide our exhaustion behind a veneer of productivity. We are told to grind, to stay bright, and to remain on at all times. But just like the earth demands the dormant chill of winter and the seed requires the suffocating pressure of the dirt to germinate, the human spirit needs the dark to put itself back together.

I never feared the darkness, not even as a child, when the shadows under the bed were supposedly teeming with unknown monsters. While other children clung to the safety of a nightlight, I found those artificial glow-worms intrusive.

I hated the light for the way it unceremoniously exposed every scar and highlighted every flaw I wasn’t ready to name. To me, the monsters weren’t hiding in the shadows; they were the judgments that only became visible when the lamp was flicked on.

In the sunlit hours, my identity felt like a costume I had worn before stepping out the door. The day is loud; it demands eye contact, it demands a bright disposition, and it demands that we perform our joy even when our hearts are heavy with the unlit moments of life. But when the sun finally retreats, the performance ends. The heavy costume falls off in the darkness; there is no one left to perform for. The night doesn’t ask me to be on. It doesn’t critique the slump of my shoulders or the salt-tracks of dried tears on my cheeks.

People fear the unknown of a dark room, but they forget that the most terrifying thing isn’t what we can’t see; it’s being seen too clearly before we are ready to be known.

In those cosy arms of the darkness, the dark feels my most trusted confidant. It is here, in the hushed hours, that I finally allow myself to be, to thrash away the shallow, performative breaths of the daytime, grounding inhalers of the cool night air.

I write in the dark, perched in a space where the moon and stars are the only lanterns I permit. They provide just enough clarity to make the white of my sheet visible, a pale island in a sea of obsidian, where my pen can trace the truths I’m sometimes afraid to speak under interrogation of the sun.

I cry in the dark, and for once, I am not met with the cold pity of the light. The darkness never whispers that it is weak to be sensitive; it never suggests that my tears are a flaw to be scrunched. Instead, it hugs me closer, offering a space to feel the full weight of my own emotions.

In this unlit chamber, I can dream of the people I once wanted in my life, the ones who left, the ones who changed, the ones who never came, the ones who’re yet to come, without the bright world demanding that I move on or stay sane. (Perhaps I prefer being insane)

In the dark, I talk to myself properly. There is no tenant in the chambers of my heart watching my every move. The dark allows for a communion that the day disrupts with its noise and its abrasive glare. I can map out my void, explore my shadows, and realise that it’s simply deep in my heart. The darkness sits with my scars, like a friend who knows that some wounds don’t need to be fixed by the light; they just need to be felt in the peace of a hug.

The inevitable dawn will eventually break the silence, and the world will once again demand its bright performance.

However, darkness remains, neither as a predator to be fled nor as a void to be feared. We have been seeing light and dark as warring opposites, a battle between good and evil, but in the quiet chamber of my heart, I see them as partners. One offers the journey, the other offers the rest. One shows the world, while the other finally reveals the soul.

To reject the darkness is to reject the very soil that allows us to grow. We spend so much energy chasing the sparkle, the glow, and the highlight, yet we forget that a diamond’s fire is only visible because of the shadows within its facets.

If the world were nothing but a constant, blinding white, we would be lost in a different kind of blindness, a flatness where nothing has depth, and no one has a secret. We need the dim corners to find our courage and the unlit hours to find our truth.

Ultimately, the beauty of the universe is not found in the light alone. If you look up at the night sky, the suns and galaxies are mere punctuation marks in a much vaster, much deeper novel.

To love the stars, one must first value the black space between them. It is that vast, obsidian space that holds them, protects them, and permits them to shine.

I will walk through the light of the day, but I will always belong to the honest darkness, the place where I am just a person, safe and whole within the hug of the dark.

Thank you for reading! If these words found a space in your heart, please leave 50 claps! and share your thoughts in the comments. To read alongside, as I navigate this world’s expressions, follow Pari Sharma

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