I sat in my backyard.  Alone. The moon was full and radiating light that illuminated the yard in the darkness in only the way a full moon can.   It felt like that moonlight pierced the darkness in a way that fought so strongly against the darkness taking over.  

My gaze fixed upward at the moon, I felt its light casting over me in the darkness and feeling as if it was there to protect me.  The dark of night was trying to overtake me and I knew I did not have the strength to resist the darkness.  The dark surrounding me felt more and more thick as it relentlessly tried to encroach on all that I felt was good.  I was crying.  

Alone in the dark and the moon was protecting me from the fullness of the dark and the only question in my mind and heart was, will this ever stop hurting?  When will this stop hurting?  Why does this continue to hurt so much?  The questions I don’t allow myself to ask most of the time. 

It’s just that every once in a while, they sneak out and tonight, it wasn’t so subtle and I allowed it.  I let the hurt take over my body.  I feel anger, I feel betrayal, I feel abandoned, I feel desperation, I feel loss, I feel hurt, I feel alone, I feel lonely, I feel sadness, I feel hopeless, I feel loss.

 I feel as if nothing will ever change.  I feel it all.  In this, I can’t move on, I can't change this, I can’t feel better.  This is why I don’t allow myself to feel these feelings.  This is why I try to make it stop and don’t let myself feel this way, or let these feelings commence.  I just stop it, stuff it, and keep on moving on.  Then, I can keep being just fine.

Yet I know that I cannot keep it up, I cannot keep hiding. I cannot keep pretending everything is just fine. I cannot keep running from reality.  As these feelings wash over my entire body in the darkness of the night, I feel that truth overtake my soul in a way that shows how real everything is that I have, what I feel and who I am. 

I realized something.  A dichotomy within myself.  I have not asked for it.   I have not created it.  It has happened to me, because of me.  It is true that I see the beauty in everything.  I perceive through the lens of beauty.  I still feel as if everything is beautiful.  This lens of beauty is something that came to me.

I have cultivated it.  Even in this moment of being overcome with the grief and sadness and hurt of all that I’m feeling, all that I wanted to run from, there is the division of both of my realities that simultaneously exist in a way that I cannot escape from either. 

I see how beautiful it is that I can feel all this and NOT run from it, but sit with it and see that it is not destroying me.  That it is part of my experience as it is running through every cell of my body and my heart feels broken.  It feels more broken than healed even after all this time and in all the beauty I see, yet what is powerful about this, is that I am in it, but it is not me. 

I am whole in who I am who is experiencing it.  These feelings I’ve been so scared of, will not take from me my life, as they teach me how to feel them, allow them and use them to see even more beauty in the whole of my brokenness.
So tonight, as I watch the full brightness of the moon, I also feel the full darkness of the night surrounding me.  I feel the light of the moon transcending the darkness.  Piercing through the evil of darkness whose purpose it is to take away from from everything that is and create nothing out of what does indeed exist. 

The darkness covers the truth and makes it seem as if it does not exist, it tries to make nothing out of the truth of what is.  I see this darkness in myself trying to do this same thing.  To deceive me with a feeling that I can’t see and when the darkness takes over all, you cannot see what is.

But hope and protection penetrate the darkness as I watch the moonlight and it banishes this dark purpose.  The darkness cannot defy the truth of what is.  I know this truth as I watch the light battle the darkness.  The light protects and heals and yet, the darkness continues to exist.

I see this in me and I continue to feel and allow the darkness to persist in me all while trusting that the light will never leave me completely and so I am whole even when I feel broken in the dark.