It's from the Bible. I don't mind saying I prefer the Tool version:
And in my darkest moment, feeble and weeping
The moon tells me a secret, a confidant
As full and bright as I am
This light is not my own and
A million light reflections pass over me
Its source is bright and endless
She resuscitates the hopeless
Without her, we are lifeless satellites drifting.
I've always been dark. I remember a picture I drew as a nine-year-old child, the top of a desk, bird's-eye view, with things a teenager would have--lipstick, concert tickets. In the far left corner was part of a suicide note and an pill bottle was strewn across the apologetic message. I entitled it "Sissy's Desk."
Thank God back then we didn't call the police every time a child called another child a name or put them in counseling for bloody drawings. It's the darkness. It was beautiful to me. It meant that a teenager had committed suicide and she had a younger sister she left behind along with all her other mess. It spoke to the connection of humanity, the consequences of a life wasted, the naming of a circumstance--the perspective of such a thing--from the innocent who lie in the wake. In the wait.
This month we celebrate Mother's Day, and although I had a good mother, who worked hard and remains humorous, fun, admirable, and generally good and decent, I always think about the mothers who can never be mothers, those who had terrible mothers, mothers who have lost a child. We smile and say nice things to one another on holidays and anniversaries that are supposed to be pleasant to most--that are nightmares for others--and pretend there is no darkness.
There is light and there is light in the darkness.
I enjoy my blogs about recipes, crafts, the lighter and brighter side. But I've never had the social skills not to hand my mother a picture that represents a suicide, taking it for granted that she would think it was brilliant.
I am the same girl that I was when I was nine. Angst, anger, addiction, apathy, cruelty, deception, hatred, bitterness.
If you're afraid of the dark I suggest you enjoy the icing and lay the fork aside.
